A STUDY OF 
 
 ENGLISH AND AMERICAN 
 
 POETS ' 
 
 A LABORATORY METHOD 
 
 BY 
 
 J. SCOTT CLARK, LlTT.D. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A PRACTICAL RHETORIC," "A STUDY OF ENGLISH PROSE 
 
 WRITERS," ETC., AND PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 
 
 AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 
 
 " Le Style c'est I'homme." BUFFON 
 
 " The whole art of criticism consists in learning to 
 know the human being who is partially revealed to us 
 in his written and spoken words." LESLIE STEPHEN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1900 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1900, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 TROW DIRECTORY 
 
 PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY 
 NEW YORK 
 
TO 
 
 MY PUPILS 
 
 AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 
 WITH APPRECIATION 
 
 OF THEIR 
 A PPRE CIA TION 
 
IS* 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEOFFREY CHAUCER . . . . . . . i 
 
 EDMUND SPENSER ....... 38 
 
 JOHN MILTON 89 
 
 JOHN DRYDEJ* ........ 131 
 
 ALEXANDER POPE ........ 163 
 
 ROBERT BURNS . . 208 
 
 WILLIAM COWPER 252 
 
 JOHN KEATS 289 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY . . . . . . 328 
 
 GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON 372 
 
 SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 411 
 
 WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 452 
 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 497 
 
 WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT . . . .' . .530 
 
 JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL 574 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW .... 616 
 
 ROBERT BROWNING 658 
 
VI TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER 714 
 
 ^/ALFRED TENNYSON . . . . . . -755 
 
 ^ OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES ...... 805 
 
 INDEX . 847 
 

 PREFACE 
 
 THE kindly reception accorded to the author's "Study of 
 English Prose Writers," published in 1898, seems to warrant 
 the appearance of this complementary volume, which was 
 foreshadowed in the preface to the " Prose Writers." As the 
 method involved is somewhat distinctive, it seems wise to 
 make some repetitions from that preface. A certain amount 
 of repetition will be found, also, in the chapters on Milton, 
 Lowell, and Holmes. 
 
 It is generally admitted by teachers of English that, after 
 one has learned to avoid the common violations of clearness, 
 force, precision, and the other requisites of good style, he may 
 best improve his own use of the mother- tongue by studying 
 the English classics. But how is one to study the English 
 classics so as to obtain positive and appreciable results ? This 
 volume represents an attempt to answer that question so far as 
 it applies to the poets concerned. Certainly, the question has 
 not been answered satisfactorily by the numerous text-books 
 on English literature, nor by the countless editions of English 
 classics ' ' with notes. ' ' To memorize biographical data or the 
 generalities and negations of criticism, or to trace out obscure 
 allusions or doubtful meanings, is certainly not to study a 
 writer in any broad or fruitful way. While the method here 
 offered may not be ideal, it is not merely theoretical. It has 
 been rigidly and continuously tested in the author's class-room 
 during the last twelve years by means of a partially developed 
 manuscript, printed privately for the use of his own pupils, 
 and again in his published volume on the " Prose Writers." 
 
 In a word, the method consists in determining the particu- 
 
Vlll PREFACE 
 
 lar and distinctive features of a writer's style (using the term 
 style in its widest sense), in sustaining this analysis by a very 
 wide consensus of critical opinion, in illustrating the particu- 
 lar characteristics of each writer by carefully selected extracts 
 from his works, and in then requiring the pupil to find, in the 
 works of the writer, parallel illustrations. 
 
 The method grew out of dissatisfaction with results ob- 
 tained under the old ways of teaching English and out of the 
 conviction that such a revolution as has taken place in the 
 manner of studying all branches of natural science during the 
 last quarter-century is both possible and desirable in the study 
 of English. Just as the pupil has learned to study oxygen and 
 electricity and protoplasm, and not merely what someone has 
 written about these, so he must learn to study the masterpieces 
 of style themselves and not merely what someone has written 
 about them. Moreover, as the student of chemistry, phys- 
 ics, or biology must have a hand-book or a set of tables to 
 show him how to go to work, so the student of English clas- 
 sics must have a hand-book to show him how to go to work. 
 This volume is offered as such a hand-book for the poets of 
 generally accepted rank except Shakespeare. 
 
 It is a plausible objection to the method here presented 
 that it is unscientific because it seems to apply the old scho- 
 lastic dictum, " First learn what is to be believed," and be- 
 cause it follows a deductive rather than an inductive order. 
 The reply is that the pupil must have some guidance, and 
 that "every one knows more than any one." It is believed 
 that the consensus of criticism here offered is sufficiently wide 
 to annul any charge of mere individual preference. To ask 
 an ordinary undergraduate to study an English classic without 
 giving him some specific directions, is as fruitless as to ask him 
 to fly. Moreover, it will be seen that the method here offered 
 is really inductive and scientific ; for the pupil is encouraged 
 to discover, in any writer under consideration, any other dis- 
 tinctive characteristic for which he can find clear illustrations 
 
PREFACE IX 
 
 besides those named in the analysis found in this book. After 
 a class has had sufficient experience in following the method 
 here presented, it may be wise and feasible to ask them to do 
 independent critical work; but born critics are as rare as born 
 chemists. 
 
 Among the results obtained from this method are an in- 
 crease in the breadth, accuracy, and idiomatic character of the 
 pupil's vocabulary; the development, in his style, of such 
 graces as chaste imagery, suspense, point, smoothness, rhythm, 
 and a greater predominance of the Anglo-Saxon element ; the 
 development of an intelligent critical habit ; and last, but per- 
 haps most important, the creation of a real hunger for the 
 best literature and the initiation of the pupil into the real life 
 and spirit of the great masters of style. The central idea of 
 this volume is found in the quotation from Leslie Stephen 
 given on the title-page : " The whole art of criticism consists 
 in learning to know the human being who is partially revealed 
 to us in his written and spoken words." 
 
 The biographical outline prefixed to the discussion of each 
 writer is intended simply as a means of review, that the reader 
 may get his historical bearings, so to speak, before beginning 
 his critical work. Those who desire more minute biogra- 
 phies will find them in the encyclopaedias and those best of 
 all biographies, the published letters of the writers concerned. 
 The biographies of the earlier writers here discussed are based 
 on Leslie Stephen's invaluable " Dictionary of National Biog- 
 raphy ; ' ' the later ones are based on a careful review of each 
 writer's correspondence. The bibliographies also prefixed to 
 the several discussions are the result of some research. No 
 subject needs the services of the professional bibliographer 
 more than criticism, yet hitherto it has been strangely and 
 almost entirely neglected. In the nature of the case, the best 
 criticism is not to be found in complete volumes nor even in 
 complete chapters or paragraphs. It is scattered sparsely 
 through a vast amount of biography and general comment, 
 
X PREFACE 
 
 and is often found in books whose titles give no hint of criti- 
 cal contents. It is believed that the bibliographies here given 
 will be found both helpful and somewhat exhaustive. Every 
 book listed has been conscientiously examined, besides a vast 
 number of volumes and periodical articles whose titles seemed 
 to promise possible criticism, but which were found to contain 
 only biography or the generalities and negations of criticism. 
 Only those books and articles are listed that contain positive 
 and specific criticism. In general, the arrangement of the 
 books in the bibliographies is somewhat in the order of their 
 importance. An effort has been made to quote all the emi- 
 nent critics who have written about the writers concerned. 
 Both the critical comments and the illustrations found in the 
 body of the chapters have been taken directly from the orig- 
 inal sources. 
 
 While this volume is not intended for use without constant 
 reference to the works of the writers treated, and while it is 
 intended, primarily, as a text-book for advanced pupils in 
 English, it is believed that it will be found not devoid of in- 
 terest to the general reader, even if used without reference to 
 companion volumes of literature. 
 
 In conclusion, the author desires to acknowledge his in- 
 debtedness to the various librarians mentioned in the preface 
 to his "Study of English Prose Writers" and also to the 
 members of his " seminary " in English at Northwestern Uni- 
 versity, who have given material aid in verifying the bibli- 
 ographies and the quotations. The omission of Shakespeare 
 from this volume is justified on the ground that a proper dis- 
 cussion of " the myriad-minded one" will require in itself, 
 if not an entire volume, the larger part of one. It is the 
 author's purpose to complete this series of "studies " by the 
 addition of such a volume, for which the material is already 
 
 in hand. 
 
 j . o. \s. 
 
 NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY, 
 EVANSTON, ILL., April, 1900. 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 
 
 WHILE the author does not assume to teach the teachers 
 who may use this volume as a text-book, it is hoped that a 
 detailed statement of the method of use found most fruitful in 
 his own classes will not appear pedantic. In order to attain 
 the ends enumerated in the preface, it has been his custom to 
 assign beforehand to each member of a class a specific section 
 (usually about forty pages) of some work of the particular 
 writer to be studied at the time and to give the following 
 directions to pupils : 
 
 ^ i. Read carefully the section assigned to you, and observe 
 critically every word, neither very long nor obsolete, that 
 impresses you as not found in the vocabularies of ordinary 
 writers and speakers, especially such words as do not belong 
 to your own habitual vocabulary. Select the best ten such 
 words, and write them after the figure i in your class-report, 
 which is to be left on the instructor's desk at the opening of 
 the class-session. 
 
 /^ 2. Observe carefully every case of especial accuracy or deli- 
 cacy in the use of words, and record the best five cases oppo- 
 site the figure 2 in your class-report, giving enough of the 
 context in every case to make the accuracy or delicacy ap- 
 parent. 
 
 3. Observe every distinct idiom, and record, opposite the 
 figure 3, your best five cases. 
 
 4. Observe every rhetorical figure, and index, opposite the 
 figure 4, the page and line where each of the best five figures 
 is to be found. 
 
 5. Index, opposite the figure 5, the best three cases of sus- 
 pense (rhetorical period) to be found in your section. 
 
 6. Index, opposite the figure 6, the best three cases of 
 point (epigram, antithesis, balance, etc.), if such be found. 
 
 7. Index, opposite the figure 7, the best three cases of 
 smooth connection found. Observe especially the connection 
 between paragraphs. 
 
 xi 
 
Xll SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 
 
 8. Index, opposite the figure 8, the best three cases of sim- 
 plicity, if such be found. Define simplicity, for this purpose, 
 as the use of easy, conversational words and constructions. 
 /"p. Name the writer's favorite metrical form or forms, giv- 
 ing both foot and verse. 
 
 10. Now determine, approximately, in the following man- 
 ner, the percentage of Anglo-Saxon words employed by the 
 given writer : 
 
 Add the whole number of words on any full page taken at 
 random, and use the sum for the denominator of a fraction. 
 Then add the words on that page that are not apparently de- 
 rived from Latin or Greek, and use the sum for the numerator 
 of your fraction ; now reduce the fraction to decimal terms, 
 and the result will be the approximate one sought. Of course, 
 the accuracy of the result thus obtained will depend on the 
 pupil's knowledge of foreign languages, but the ordinary col- 
 lege student knows enough of Latin, at least, to make this 
 exercise practicable and beneficial. 
 
 Now read carefully the analysis of the writer under consid- 
 eration, to be found in this volume, until you shall have 
 gained from the comments and illustrations a clear idea of 
 each of his particular characteristics. Then review the section 
 assigned you from the writer's works, find there the best three 
 illustrations you can of each of the particular characteristics, 
 and index in your class- report the best illustrations found for 
 each point, numbering according to the numbers given in the 
 text-book. If your section does not afford illustrations of all 
 the particular characteristics, obtain these from any of the 
 writer's other works available so far as you have time. 
 
 Finally, copy at the end of your class-report at least one 
 hundred words consisting of the finest and brightest short pas- 
 sages and quotable expressions to be found in what you have 
 read. 
 
 If an average of forty i2mo pages from any writer be as- 
 signed to every pupil, the ordinary college upper-classman 
 will accomplish the work outlined above in about five hours 
 of faithful application that is, enough to entitle him to an 
 ordinary credit of two, perhaps three, week-hours. The work 
 may be divided and considered at two or more class-sessions, 
 or the complete reports may be considered at one time and 
 credit be given accordingly. The number of illustrations 
 of each point in a writer required from each pupil is, of 
 
SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS Xlll 
 
 course, arbitrary. The numbers suggested have been found 
 practicable. 
 
 The recitation-hour is occupied in comparing the various 
 pupils' reports, listening to several illustrations of each of the 
 particular characteristics, emphasizing the best cases under the 
 ten general characteristics, and in answering many questions 
 incident to the discussion. It is the author's practice to con- 
 sider the ten general characteristics at one recitation, calling 
 for definitions of selected words under point i, and comment- 
 ing at length on the illustrations offered of accuracy and deli- 
 cacy in meaning. A second recitation on each writer is then 
 devoted to a discussion of the particular characteristics and to 
 the quotations. Written exercises are also required, at inter- 
 vals, in which every pupil is expected to make accurate use, 
 in sentences of his own invention, of the rare words selected 
 previously from the various writers. This method, as a whole, 
 has never failed to stimulate interest. 
 
 One difficulty confronts the teacher who would have his 
 pupils study the English classics by this or any other method ; 
 namely, the lack of proper material in duplicate. To use a 
 scientific, that is to say, a laboratory method, one must have 
 material corresponding in variety and duplication to that pro- 
 vided at each table in a chemical laboratory ; but few school- 
 boards are yet willing to give to the teacher of English equal 
 facilities with his colleague in chemistry or biology. The use 
 of the ordinary book of "selections" is a delusion and a 
 snare. As well expect to get a fair idea of the Atlantic by 
 examining a pint bottle of its water. 
 
 Three methods of meeting this exigency have been em- 
 ployed by the author; none fruitless, but of varying value. 
 First, one may have every pupil obtain a cheap edition of 
 some complete work of every writer to be studied during a 
 given period, and may then assign the same in sections, dupli- 
 cating according to the circumstances. The numerous cheap 
 editions of detached works published within recent years make 
 this plan feasible without unduly burdening the pupils by the 
 expense. Many years' use of this method has proved its prac- 
 ticability. The only serious objection lies in the fact that 
 often no single work of a writer gives a sufficiently broad 
 view of his style. For example, characteristics of Goldsmith 
 to be found plentifully in his plays and essays are not to be 
 found in the "Vicar of Wakefield." Of course, the ideal 
 
XIV SUGGESTIONS TO TEACHERS 
 
 and the just way would be for the school to own the works 
 required in sufficient duplicate and then to charge, if neces- 
 sary, a small fee, as is done in the laboratories of natural sci- 
 ence, for the use and wear of these materials. 
 
 The second method is to have each pupil own the complete 
 works of some one writer to be studied, and then to rotate 
 these books through the class. This method secures the broad 
 view lacking in the first, but it is cumbrous, sometimes irritat- 
 ing, and it makes concentration of attention in the class-room 
 impossible since no two pupils may be studying the same 
 writer at the same time. 
 
 The third, and by far the best method yet found, involves 
 more preliminary work and expense than may, perhaps, be 
 expected of every teacher. A set of books, numerous enough 
 to accommodate his present and probable classes, has been 
 made by the author by taking the complete works of each 
 of the twenty writers here treated, in sufficient duplications 
 to make an average of about forty pages for each pupil. 
 These have been divided into sections, making the divis- 
 ions at the beginnings of chapters, and then the various piles 
 of twenty sections each have been rebound into strong, 
 durable volumes. The result is a series of books, each differ- 
 ent from the rest, numbered consecutively, and all together 
 including the complete works of every writer to be studied. 
 These books are owned by the teacher or by the school, and 
 are leased to the pupil, under fixed conditions, for a fee suf- 
 ficient to keep the books in repair. Thus the class, as a 
 whole, have the widest view of the writer's style, and the 
 objections to the first two methods are overcome. The first 
 method is practicable everywhere, and is, on the whole, very 
 satisfactory, especially with classes of moderate size. The 
 second is hardly to be recommended ; the third is almost 
 ideal. 
 
CHAUCER, i34G(?)ri400, , v , ..... 
 
 Biographical Outline. Geoffrey Chaucer, born prob- 
 ably in 1340 ; father, John Chaucer, a well-to-do, respect- 
 able vintner living in Thames Street, London ; of Chaucer's 
 life until 1357 nothing is known; he acquires a liberal edu- 
 cation, but where he studies is not known; in 1357 he 
 appears as a page in the household of the Duke of Clar- 
 ence, second son of Edward III. ; here he continues for about 
 eight years, and sees much of the world ; in 1359 he " bears 
 arms," and takes part in an expedition into France, but no 
 fighting is done ; he is taken prisoner at Retiers in Brittany 
 and is ransomed by the King of England ; in 1366 he mar- 
 ries a lady in service upon the Queen, of the family of Roet, 
 Christian name Philippa, but the marriage proves unhappy ; 
 one son, Thomas, is born to them; on June 20, 1367, 
 Chaucer receives, "for good service," a pension from the 
 King (amount unknown) ; he is called at this time a yeoman 
 of the king's chamber ; in 1369 he is campaigning again in 
 France; from June to September, 1370, he is abroad in the 
 King's service. The years 1359-72 constitute the first lit- 
 erary period of Chaucer's life ; this period shows the influ- 
 ence of the French poets, and is first represented by " The 
 Boke of the Duchesse," written in 1369; many spurious 
 writings attributed to Chaucer are found in this period ; in 
 1372, as a member of a public commission, he visits Genoa 
 and Florence and meets Boccaccio; in 1373 he returns to 
 England. 
 
 In April, 1374, he receives as a pension a daily pitcher of 
 wine for life ; this afterward is commuted to twenty marks ; 
 June 8, 1374, he is appointed comptroller of the customs 
 
2 CHAUCER 
 
 and subsidy of wools, skins, and tanned hides in the port of 
 London ; June i3th he receives from the Duke of Lancas- 
 ter a grant of ^10 a year for life ; November 8, 1375, he ob- 
 tains a-granf rtf' custody of the lands and person of Edmund 
 Staplegate of Kent, which, brings him about ^104 ; July 12, 
 1 3 'j5. ,ho , receives. - froip t .the King ^71 4*. 6d., being the 
 price of certain forfeited wool ; a pound in Chaucer's day 
 was worth about twelve pounds of current English money 
 to-day; during 1374-86 he lives in a dwelling-house above 
 the gate of Aldgate; late in 1376 he is appointed, with Sir 
 John Burley, to discharge some secret service abroad ; in 
 February, 1377, he is sent with Sir Thomas Percy on an- 
 other secret mission into Flanders; early in 1378 he is in 
 France; he is sent into Lombardy in May, 1378, when the 
 name of the poet John Gower appears as one of the attorneys 
 in charge of the office of comptroller during Chaucer's absence; 
 Chaucer and Gower become intimate friends, but their friend- 
 ship is afterward broken by quarrels; in May, 1382, Chaucer 
 is appointed comptroller of the petty customs in the port 
 of London, during the King's pleasure, with permission to 
 employ a deputy; in 1386 he is elected Knight of the shire 
 for Kent; at the close of 1386, on account of political dis- 
 turbances, he loses both of his offices. The years 1372-86 
 constitute Chaucer's second literary period, which shows the 
 marked influence of Dante and other Italians, especially the 
 Florentines; with the exception of the "House of Fame," 
 written about 1380, Chaucer abandons during this period the 
 octosyllabic couplet, and principally uses the heroic coup- 
 let; he writes the "Assembly of Foules " in 1375, " Troi- 
 lus and Criyseyde " about 1380, and begins the "Legend 
 of Good Women" about 1382, but never completes it; his 
 wife is thought to have died in 1387. 
 
 In April, 1388, he goes on his famous pilgrimage to Can- 
 terbury ; in May of this year, because of great financial dis- 
 tress, he sells two of his pensions to one John Sealby ; in 
 
CHAUCER 3 
 
 1389 Chaucer is appointed clerk of the King's works at the 
 palace of Westminster, at the Tower of London, at the castle 
 of Berkhampstead, at the King's manors of Kennington, El- 
 tham, Clarendon, Sheen, Byfleet, Childern Langley, and 
 Feckenham, and at the mews for the King's falcons at Char- 
 ing Cross ; this work he is permitted to execute by deputy ; 
 in July, 1390, he is ordered to procure workmen and material 
 for the repair of St. George's Chapel, Windsor, and is also 
 made a member of a commission to repair the banks of the 
 Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich ; he shows him- 
 self unable successfully to manage these public affairs ; in 
 1391 he is dismissed from his clerkship, but is immediately 
 appointed, together with one Richard Brittle, as forester of 
 North Petherton Park, Somersetshire; in 1397 Chaucer is 
 appointed sole forester ; in 1394 he obtains from King Rich- 
 ard a pension of ^50 for life ; through carelessness in the 
 management of his business affairs he is so often sued for debt 
 that the King takes him for two years under his special pro- 
 tection ; in October, 1398, Chaucer receives another grant 
 of a tun of wine daily; October 3, 1399, four days after 
 Henry IV. comes to the throne, in response to Chaucer's ap- 
 peal to the King entitled the " Compleint of my Purse," he 
 receives an additional pension of ^26 13^. 4</., to be paid 
 annually ; he leases a house situated in the garden of the 
 Lady Chapel, Westminster, and makes 'it his home ; he dies 
 October 25, 1400, and is buried in the " Poets' Corner " in 
 Westminster Abbey. The years 1386-1400 constitute the 
 third literary period of Chaucer's life ; he begins the great 
 work of this period, the " Canterbury Tales," in 1387, and 
 completes the greater part by the close of 1393 ; he writes 
 also during this period " L 1 Envoy a Scogan," " L' Envoy 
 a Buklon" and a " Balade de Vilage sanz Peinture" 
 
CHAUCER 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON CHAUCER. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 3 : 291-366. 
 Lounsbury, T. R., "Studies in Chaucer." New York, 1892, Harper, 
 
 3 vols., v. index. 
 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets." London, 1881, Macmillan, I : 1^81. 
 Shairp, J. C., " Poetic Interpretation of Nature." Edinburgh, 1877, 
 
 Douglass, 151-162. 
 Hazlitt, William, "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, 
 
 Bell, 26-45. 
 
 Morley, H., " English Writers." London, 1890, Cassell, 5: 83-347. 
 Rossetti*, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, n. d., Ward & 
 
 Downey, 1-18. 
 Brooke, Stopford, "English Literature." New York, n. d., American 
 
 Book Co., 42-49. 
 
 Godwin, William, "Life of Geoffrey Chaucer." London, 1804, Daw- 
 son, 4 vols., v. index. 
 Arnold, T., "A Manual of English Literature." Boston, 1885, Ginn 
 
 & Heath, 25-34 and 376-381. 
 Hunt, Leigh, " Wit and Humor." London, 1875, Smith, Elder & Co., 
 
 66- no. 
 Greene, J. R., "History of the English People." New York, 1879, 
 
 Harper, I : 503-509. 
 Ward, A. W., "The Life and Works of Chaucer." New York, 1880, 
 
 v. index. 
 Clarke, C. C., "Riches of Chaucer." London, 1835, E. Wilson, i- 
 
 157- 
 Lord, John, "Beacon Lights of History." New York, 1886, Fords, 
 
 Howard & Hulbert, 3: 59-91. 
 Phillips, M. G., A "Popular Manual of English Literature." New 
 
 York, 1893, Harper, I : 31-79. 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & MacMillan, 
 
 i: 81-113. 
 Taine, H. A., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Holt, i : 99-101 and 121-150. 
 Minto, William, " Characteristics of English Poets. " Edinburgh, 1874, 
 
 Blackwood, 1-58. 
 Howitt, William, " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 
 
 1847, Harper, i : 1-14. 
 Beers, H. A., "From Chaucer to Longfellow." New York, 1894, 
 
 Fiood & Vincent, 24-30. 
 
CHAUCER 5 
 
 Warton, T. f "History of English Poetry." London, 1840, Ward & 
 
 Lock, 2 : 127-131. 
 Skeat, W. W., "The Student's Chaucer." New York, 1895, Macmil- 
 
 lan, p. 13. 
 Campbell, Thomas, "Specimens of the British Poets." Philadelphia, 
 
 1869, Lippincott, 65-75. 
 
 Belgravia, 48 : 34-46 and 160-174 (H. R. Haweis). 
 English Illustrated Magazine, 1 : 733-746 (Alfred Ainger). 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 24 : 266-279 (Stopford Brooke) ; 27 : 383-393 
 
 (F. J. Furnivall). 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 40 : 592-600 (T. R. Lounsbury). 
 Dublin University Magazine, 92: 26-40 (H. R. Haweis). 
 Athenaum, 1894, i: 742-837, and 1892, 2: 253 (W. W. Skeat). 
 Dial (Chicago), 17: 260 (Hiram Corson); 12: 351 (O. F. Emerson). 
 Academy, 46 : 153 and 195 ; and 33 : 292 and 307 (W. W. Skeat). 
 Quarterly Review, 180: 521 (W. W. Skeat). 
 North American Review, in : 155 (J. R. Lowell). 
 Nation, 48 : 527 and 49 : 10 (T. R. Lounsbury). 
 Dial (Boston), 4: 297-303 (H. D. Thoreau). 
 Temple Bar, 54 : 196-198 (R. H. Home). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Naturalness Artlessness Freshness. 
 
 " Chaucer is the most natural, as Pope is the most artificial, 
 of the great English poets. He not only observes truly and 
 feels keenly, but he keeps his feeling free and unspoiled by 
 his knowledge of books and of affairs. . . . The study 
 of books, in an age when study so often led to pedantry, left 
 him as free and human as it found him. . . . His sim- 
 plicity is that of elegance, not of poverty. The quiet uncon- 
 cern with which he says his best things is peculiar to him 
 among English poets. . . . He prattles inadvertently 
 away, and all the while, like the princess in the story, lets 
 fall a pearl at every other word. It is such a piece of good 
 luck to be natural ! It is the good gift which the fairy grand- 
 mother brings to her prime favorite in the cradle. . . . 
 He is always natural, because if not always absolutely new, 
 he is always delightfully fresh, because he sets before us the 
 
O CHAUCER 
 
 world as it honestly appeared to Geoffrey Chaucer, and not 
 a world as it seemed proper to certain persons that it ought 
 to appear. . . . There is in him the exuberant fresh- 
 ness and greenness of spring. . . . Reading him is like 
 brushing through the dewy grass at sunrise. Everything is 
 new and sparkling and fragrant. . . . His first merit, 
 the chief one in all art, is sincerity. . . . He is the most 
 unconventional of poets and the frankest. If his story be 
 dull, he rids his hearers of all uncomfortable qualms by being 
 himself the first to yawn. . . . His nature was sensitive 
 to the natural. . . . There was a pervading wholesome- 
 ness in the writings of this man a vernal property that 
 soothes and refreshes in a way of which no other has ever 
 found the secret. I repeat to myself a thousand times, 
 
 ' Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote 
 The droghte of Marche hath perced to the rote 
 
 And smale fowles maken melodye', 
 
 and still at the thousandth time a breath of uncontaminated 
 springtide seems to lift the hair on my forehead. The most 
 hardened roue of literature can scarce confront these simple 
 and winning graces without feeling something of the unworn 
 sentiment of his youth revive in him. Poets have forgotten 
 that the way to be original is to be healthy ; that the fresh 
 color so delightful in all good writing is won by escaping 
 from the fixed air of self into the brisk atmosphere of univer- 
 sal sentiments ; and that to make the common marvellous, as 
 if it were a revelation, is the test of genius. It is good to re- 
 treat now and then from beyond earshot of the introspective 
 confidences of modern literature, and to lose ourselves in the 
 gracious worldliness of Chaucer. . . . The quiet un- 
 concern with which he says his best things is peculiar to 
 him among English poets, though Goldsmith, Addison, and 
 Thackeray have approached it in prose." Lowell. 
 
CHAUCER 7 
 
 " There is no other English author so absolutely free, not 
 merely from effort but from the faintest suggestion of ef- 
 fort. . . . No healthier nature than his can be found in 
 the whole range of our literature among the poets whose per- 
 sonality appears prominent in their writings. There is not a 
 trace of morbid feeling in his lines, which still glow for us 
 with all the freshness of immortal youth." T. R. Lounsbury. 
 
 " His poetry resembles the root just springing from the 
 ground rather than the full-blown flower. His muse is no 
 < babbling gossip of the air/ fluent and redundant ; but, like 
 a stammerer or a dumb person that has just found the use of 
 speech, crowds many things together with eager haste, with 
 anxious pauses and fond repetitions, to prevent mistakes. 
 There were none of the commonplaces of poetic dic- 
 tion in our author's time, no reflected lights of fancy, no bor- 
 rowed roseate tints; he was obliged to inspect things for 
 himself, to look narrowly, and almost to handle the object, 
 as in the obscurity of morning we partly see and partly grope 
 our way." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " No doubt this simplicity naivete, we are fond of calling 
 it is one of the first delights that every reader experiences 
 on his first introduction to Chaucer." Alfred Ainger. 
 
 " Chaucer's artlessness is half the secret of his wonderful 
 ease in story-telling, and is so engaging that, like a child's 
 sweet unconsciousness, one would not wish it otherwise." 
 H. A. Beers. 
 
 " Many of his verses come to us like the prattle of child- 
 hood. ' ' William Minto. 
 
 ' ' A charming freshness forms the atmosphere of all his 
 work; he is perpetually new." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
8 CHAUCER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 " A clerk ther was of Oxen ford also, 
 That un-to logik hadde longe y-go. 
 As lene was his hors as is a rake, 
 And he nas nat right fat, I undertake ; 
 But loked holwe, and ther-to soberly. 
 Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy ; 
 For he had geten him yet no benefyce, 
 Ne was so worldly for to have offyce." 
 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Jales. 
 
 " Amonges thise povre folk ther dwelte a man 
 Which that was holden povrest of hem alle ; 
 But hye god som tyme senden can 
 His grace in-to a litel oxes stalle ; 
 lanicula men of that throp him calle." 
 
 The Clerkes Tale. 
 
 " A povre widwe, somdel stope in age, 
 Was whylom dwelling in a narwe cotage, 
 Bisyde a grove, stonding in a dale. 
 This widwe, of which I telle yow my tale, 
 Sin thilke day that she was last a wyf, 
 In pacience ladde a ful simple lyf, 
 For litel was hir catel and hir rente ; 
 By housbondrye, of such as God hir sente, 
 She fond hir-self, and eek hir doghtren two." 
 
 The Nonne Preestes Tale. 
 
 2. Liquid Smoothness." He had a very fine ear for 
 the music of verse, and the tale and the verse go together like 
 the voice and music. Indeed, so softly flowing and bright 
 are they that to read them is like listening in a meadow full 
 of sunshine to a clear stream rippling over its bed of pebbles." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " He was . . . one of the best versifiers that ever 
 made English trip and sing with a gayety that seemed care- 
 less, but where every foot beats time to the time of thought. 
 He found our language lumpish, stiff, unwilling, too 
 
CHAUCER 9 
 
 apt to speak Saxonly in grouty monosyllables ; he left it en- 
 riched with the longer measure of the Italian and Provencal 
 poets. He reconciled, in the harmony of his verse, the Eng- 
 lish bluntness with the dignity and elegance of the less homely 
 Southern speech." Lowell. 
 
 " Chaucer's versification, considering the time at which he 
 wrote, and that versification is a thing in a great degree me- 
 chanical, is not one of his least merits. It has considerable 
 strength and harmony, and its apparent deficiency in the 
 latter respect arises chiefly from the alterations which have 
 since taken place in the pronunciation or mode of accenting 
 the words of the language." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " A little long they [Chaucer's ' Tales'] may be; all the 
 writings of this age, French, or imitated from the French, are 
 born of too prodigal minds ; but how they glide along ! A 
 winding stream which flows smoothly on level sand, and glit- 
 ters now and again in the sun, is the only image we can 
 find." Taine. 
 
 11 It would be difficult to find a parallel in Italian verse 
 of any date to the easy and thoroughly English fluency of 
 Chaucer's facile riding rhyme." Francis Pa/grave. 
 
 [He is] " . . . the master who uses our language 
 with a power, a freedom, a variety, a rhythmic beauty, that, 
 in five centuries, not ten of his successors have been found 
 able to rival. . . . There is in his verse a music which 
 hardly ever loses itself, and which at times is as sweet as 
 that in any English poet after him. . . . Chaucer is the 
 father of our splendid English poetry, he is our ' well of 
 English undefiled,' because, by the lovely charm of his dic- 
 tion, the lovely charm of his movement, he makes an epoch 
 and founds a tradition. In Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, 
 Keats, we can follow the tradition of the liquid diction, the 
 fluid movement of Chaucer." T. H. Ward. 
 
 "No student of the poet's writings needs now to be told 
 that the art of versification was an art in which he was su- 
 
10 CHAUCER 
 
 premely interested, and to which he gave the most careful 
 study. The result is that he became one of the greatest 
 masters of melody that our literature has on its rolls." T. R. 
 Lounsbury. 
 
 11 He has an exquisite ear for music, and pays great atten- 
 tion to the melodious flow of his verse." Walter Skeat. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Hir litel child lay weping in hir arm, 
 
 And kneling, pitously to him she seyde, 
 
 ' Pees, litel sone, I wol do thee non harm.' 
 With that hir kerchef of hir heed she breyde, 
 And over his litel yen she it leyde ; 
 
 And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste, 
 
 And in-to heven hir yen up she caste. 
 
 * Moder,' quod she, ' and mayde bright, Marye, 
 
 Rewe on my child, that of thy gentillesse 
 Rewest on every rewful in distresse ! ' " 
 
 The Tale of the Man of Lawe. 
 
 " The bisy larke, messager of day, 
 Salue'th in hir song the morwe gray ; 
 And fyry Phebus ryseth up so brighte, 
 That al the orient laugheth of the lighte, 
 And with his stremes dryeth in the greves 
 The silver dropes hanging on the leves." 
 
 The Knightes Tale. 
 
 " Thus hath this pitous day a blisful ende, 
 
 For every man and womman dooth his might 
 This day in murthe and revel to dispende 
 Fil on the welkne shoon the sterres light. 
 For more solempne in every mannes sight 
 This feste was, and gretter of costage, 
 Than was the revel of hir manage." 
 
 TheClerkes Tale. 
 
CHAUCER II 
 
 Genial Humor Kindly Satire. " All his best 
 work as a poet was done at the instigation of love and humor. 
 It is remarkable that, while both his serious and his comic 
 productions are founded, in most cases, on pre-existing works 
 of art, in the serious pieces he follows his original much more 
 closely than in the comic. In his tales, as Tyrwhitt says, ' He 
 is generally satisfied with borrowing a slight hint of his sub- 
 ject, which he varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, 
 and gives the whole the air and color of an original.' His 
 imagination dwelt by preference in the regions of brightness, 
 sweetness, softness, and laughter in its broadest as well as in 
 its subtlest varieties. . . . Affairs of the heart in high 
 and humble life are his themes ; he is the sympathetic poet 
 of the aspirations, sorrows, and manifold ludicrous complica- 
 tions of the tender passion. . . . Chaucer's humor is the 
 most universally patent and easily recognized of his gifts. The 
 smile or laugh that he raises, by refined irony or by broad jest 
 and incident, is conspicuously genial. The great criterion of 
 good nature, the indispensable basis of humor, is the power of 
 making and sustaining a jest at one's own expense ; and none 
 of our humorists bears this test so well as Chaucer. He often 
 harps on his own supposed imperfections, his ignorance of 
 love, his want of rhetorical skill, his poverty." William 
 Minto. 
 
 " A hearty laugh and a thrust in the ribs are his weapons. 
 He makes fun of you to your face ; and even if you wince a 
 little, you cannot help joining in his mirth. ... In 
 Chaucer's poetry the humor is playing all the time round the 
 horizon like heat-lightning. It is unexpected and unpredict- 
 able ; but as soon as you turn away from watching for it, be- 
 hold it flashes again as innocently and softly as ever. 
 The satire of the other [Chaucer] is genial with the broad 
 sunshine of humor, into which the victims walk forth with a 
 delightful unconcern, laying aside of themselves the disguises 
 that seem to make them uncomfortably warm, till they have 
 
12 CHAUCER 
 
 made a thorough betrayal of themselves so unconsciously that 
 we almost pity while we laugh. . . . There is no touch 
 of cynicism in all he wrote. . . . It is true ... of 
 his humor that it pervades his comic tales like sunshine, and 
 never dazzles the attention by a sudden flash. Sometimes he 
 brings it in parenthetically, and insinuates a sarcasm so slyly 
 as almost to slip by without our notice. Sometimes he turns 
 round upon himself and smiles at a trip he has made into fine 
 writing. . . . Nay, sometimes it twinkles roguishly 
 through his very tears. . . . Chaucer drew from the South 
 a certain airiness of sentiment and expression, a felicity of 
 phrase, and an elegance of turn hitherto unprecedented and 
 hardly yet matched in our literature, but all the while kept firm 
 hold of his native soundness of understanding and that genial 
 humor which seems to be the proper element of worldly wis- 
 dom. . . . His humor ... in its suavity, its per- 
 petual presence, and its shy unobtrusiveness, is something 
 wholly new in literature." Lowell. 
 
 " He brightens his delineations with kindly and enjoying 
 humor the humor of a man who knows life in its multiform 
 aspects from observing it with mingled keenness and sympathy 
 and mixing in it personally." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " There is [in his verse] a sweet humanity, which takes all 
 bitterness from his satire, and exhibits some degree of gracious 
 sympathy with every sort and condition of men. . . . 
 His humor is usually subtile and playful ; even at its broadest 
 and coarsest it is genuine, and has at least the artist's apology 
 to excuse it."-^/. C. Robertson. 
 
 "He never sneers, for he had a wide charity, and we can 
 always smile in his pages at the follies and forgive the sins of 
 men." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " The most striking thing about Chaucer's humor is its 
 great kindliness. He laughs, but not maliciously. He has 
 nothing of the partisan, for he looks at the whole world with 
 the same mirthful gaze. Nothing is too high for his laughter, 
 
CHAUCER 13 
 
 nothing is too low. . . . He does not run after a jest ; 
 he does not joke merely for the sake of joking. He has his 
 humor under such perfect control that he can shift his 
 humorous point of view as he changes from one speaker to an- 
 other." O. W. Holmes. 
 
 " Concerning Chaucer's use of the power which he in so 
 large a measure possessed, viz., that of covering with ridicule 
 the palpable vices or weaknesses of the classes or kinds of men 
 represented by some of his character-types, one assertion may 
 be made with tolerable safety. Whatever may have been the 
 first stimulus and the ultimate scope of the wit and humor 
 which he here expended, they are not to be explained as 
 moral indignation in disguise. And in truth Chaucer's mer- 
 riment flows spontaneously from a source very near the sur- 
 face ; he is so extremely diverting because he is so extremely 
 diverted himself."/: If. Ward. 
 
 "His satire ... is genial. For the lowest he has 
 no scorn as he has for the hypocrisies of men who wear 
 religion as a cloak to their offences." Henry Morley. 
 
 " The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper, 
 betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed satire 
 when least expected. His fine irony may have sometimes 
 left his commendations, or even the objects of his admiration, 
 in a very ambiguous condition." Benjamin Disraeli. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A yerd she hadde, enclosed al aboute 
 With stikkes, and a drye dich with-oute, 
 In which she had a cok, hight Chauntecleer, 
 In al the land of crowing nas his peer. 
 His vois was merier than the mery orgon 
 On messe-dayes that in the chirche gon ; 
 Wei sikerer was his crowing in his logge 
 Than is a clokke, or an abbey orlogge. 
 By nature knew he ech ascencioun 
 Of equinoxial in thilke toun ; 
 
14 CHAUCER 
 
 For whan degrees fiftene were ascended, 
 Thanne crewe he, that it might nat be amended." 
 
 The Nonne Preestes Tale. 
 
 " Of Sampson now wol I na-more seyn. 
 Beth war by this ensample old and playn 
 That no men telle hir conseil til hir wyves, 
 Of swich thing as they wolde han secree fayn, 
 If that it touche hir limmes or hir lyves." 
 
 The Monkcs Tale. 
 
 " He was an esy man to yeve penaunce, 
 Ther as he wiste to han a good pitaunce ; 
 For unto a povre ordre for to yive 
 Is signe that a man is wel y-shrive. 
 For if he yaf, he dorste make avaunt, 
 He wiste that a man was repentaunt. 
 For many a man so hard is of his herte, 
 He may nat wepe, al-thogh him sore smerte. 
 Therefore, instede of weping and preyeres, 
 Men moot yeve silver to the povre freres." 
 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 4. Sympathy with Suffering Simple Pathos. 
 
 " In depth of simple pathos and intensity of conception, 
 never swerving from his subject, I think no other writer 
 comes near him, not even the Greek tragedians." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 " The deepest pathos of the drama . . . is sudden as 
 a stab, while in narrative it is more or less suffused with pity, 
 a feeling capable of prolonged sustention. This presence 
 of the author's own sympathy is noticeable in all Chaucer's 
 pathetic passages. . . . When he comes to the sorrow 
 of his story, he seems to croon over his thoughts, to soothe 
 them and dwell upon them with a kind of pleased compas- 
 sion, as a child treats a wounded bird which he fears to grasp 
 too tightly, and yet cannot make up his mind wholly to let 
 go. ' ' Lowell. 
 
CHAUCER 1$ 
 
 " He is at heart surpassingly gentle and compassionate. 
 The innocence and sufferings of women move him deeply. ' ' 
 Henry S. Pane oast. 
 
 " Pity for inevitable suffering is a note of Chaucer's 
 mind which forever distinguishes him from Boccaccio and 
 makes him out as the true forerunner of the poet of Hamlet 
 and Othello. . . . He is overcome by ' pity and ruth ' 
 as he reads of suffering, and his eyes ' wax foul and sore ' as 
 he prepares to tell of its infliction." T. H. Ward. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Alias, the wo ! alias, the peynes stronge, 
 That I for yow have suffred, and so longe ! 
 Alias, the deeth ! alias, myn Emelye ! 
 Alias, departing of our companye ! 
 Alias, myn hertes quene ! alias, my wyf ! 
 Myn hertes lady, endere of my lyf ! 
 What is this world ? what asketh men to have ? 
 Now with his love, now in his colde grave 
 Allone, with-outen any companye." 
 
 The Knightes Tale. 
 
 " O, which a pitous thing it was to see 
 
 Hir swowning, and hir humble voys to here ! 
 ' Grauntmercy, lord, that thanke I yow,' quod she, 
 * That ye han saved me my children dere ! 
 Now rekke I never to ben deed right here ; 
 Sith I stonde in your love and in your grace, 
 No fors of deeth, ne whan my spirit pace.' " 
 
 The Clerkes Tale. 
 
 " Have ye nat seyn som tyme a pale face 
 
 Among a prees, of him that hath be lad 
 Toward his deeth, wher-as him gat no grace 
 And swich a colour in his face hath had, 
 Men mighte knowe his face, that was bistad, 
 Amonges alle the faces in that route : 
 So stant Custance, and loketh hir aboute." 
 
 The Man of Lawes Tale, 
 
16 CHAUCER 
 
 5. Respect for Womanhood. " Chaucer alone, in 
 his time, felt the whole beauty of womanhood, and felt it 
 most in its most perfect type in wifehood, with the modest 
 graces of the daisy, with its soothing virtues, and its power of 
 healing inward wounds. Physicians in his day ascribed such 
 power to the daisy, which, by Heaven's special blessing, was 
 made common to all, and was the outward emblem also of 
 the true and pure wife in its heart of gold and its white crown 
 of innocence. ... As the range of Shakespeare was 
 from Imogen to Dame Quickly and lower, so the range of 
 Chaucer is from the ideal patience of the wife Griselda, or the 
 girlish innocence and grace of Emelie in the * Knight's Tale ' 
 to the Wife of Bath and lower ; and in each of these great 
 poets the predominating sense is of the beauty and honor of 
 true womanhood. If there were many Englishmen who read 
 what we have of the ' Canterbury Tales ' straight through, it 
 would not be necessary to say that, even in the fragment as 
 it stands, expression of the poet's sense of the worth and 
 beauty of womanhood, very greatly predominates over his 
 satire of the weaknesses of women. . . . In a sense of 
 his own, he takes the daisy for his flower, and rises high 
 above all poets of his age in honor to marriage and praise of 
 the purity of the wife's white daisy crown." Henry Morley. 
 
 " We have no hesitation in placing him very high in the 
 list of those who have exalted our ideal of the womanly char- 
 acter. Womanliness is indeed the characteristic feature of 
 Chaucer's women. ' ' Alfred Ainger. 
 
 " His works show that he was not likely to fail in that 
 respectfulness that women are said to love. He is on all oc- 
 casions the champion of ' gentle woman, gentle creatures ; ' 
 and however much sly fun he makes of their foibles, he com- 
 pensates amply by frequently expressed indignation at their 
 wrongs and by praises of their many virtues. . . . All 
 Chaucer's works show that he was most intimately pervaded 
 by chivalrous sentiment. . . . It is womanhood in dis- 
 
CHAUCER 17 
 
 tress that enters his heart with the keenest stroke. 
 His gallery of distressed heroines was as wide as the range of 
 legend and history that was known to him. . . . The 
 thought of their suffering agitates him, destroys his compos- 
 ure ; he cannot proceed without stopping to express his com- 
 passion or to appeal to Heaven against the caprice of Fortune 
 or the wickedness of men." William Minto. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Lo, what gentillesse these women have, 
 
 If we coude know it for our rudenesse ! 
 How busie they be us to keepe and save, 
 Both in hele, and also in sikenesse ! 
 And always right sorrie for our distresse, 
 In every manner ; thus shew thy routhe, 
 That in hem is al goodnesse and trouthe." 
 
 A Praise of Women. 
 
 " O blissful ordre, of wedlok precious, 
 Thou art so mery, and eek so vertuous, 
 And so commended and appreved eek, 
 That every man that halt him worth a leek, 
 Up-on his bare knees oghte al his lyf 
 Thanken his god that him hath sent a wyf ; 
 Or elles preye to god him for to sende 
 A wyf, to laste un-to his lyves ende." 
 
 The Marchante Tale. 
 
 " In hir is heigh beautee with-oute pryde, 
 Yowthe, with-oute grenehede or folye ; 
 To alle hir werkes vertu is hir gyde, 
 Humblesse hath slayn in hir al tirannye. 
 She is mirour of alle curteisye ; 
 Hir herte is verray chambre of holinesse, 
 Hir hand, ministre of fredom for almesse." 
 
 The Tale of the Man of Lawe. 
 
 6. Love of Nature. " His descriptions of nature are 
 as true as his sketches of human character ; and incidental 
 
 2 
 
18 CHAUCER 
 
 touches in him reveal his love of the one as unmistakably as 
 his unflagging interest in the study of the other. . . . 
 When he went forth on these April and May mornings, it 
 was not solely with the intent of composing a roundelay or a 
 marguerite ; but we may be well assured that he allowed the 
 songs of the little birds, the perfume of the flowers, and the 
 fresh verdure of the English landscape to sink into his very 
 soul." T. H. Ward. 
 
 11 He was the first who made the love of nature a dis- 
 tinct element in our poetry. . . . The delightful and 
 simple familiarity of the poet with the meadows, brooks, 
 and birds, and his love of them, has the effect of making 
 every common aspect of nature new ; the May morning is 
 transfigured by his enjoyment of it ; the grass of the field is 
 seen as those in Paradise beheld it ; the dew lies on our 
 heart as we go forth with the poet in the dawning, and the 
 wind blows past our ear like the music of an old song heard 
 in the days of childhood." Stopf or d Brooke. 
 
 " Chaucer's heart fitted him very well to be the poet of 
 tender sentiment. He seems to have dwelt with fond obser- 
 vation on everything that was bright and pretty, from ' the 
 smale fowles that slepen all the night with open eye,' to the 
 little herd-grooms playing on their pipes of green corn. He 
 watched the little conies at their play, the little squirrels at 
 their sylvan feasts. . . . But of all things of beauty in 
 nature, the singing-birds were his most especial favorites. 
 He often dwells on the ravishing sweetness of their melodies." 
 William Minto. 
 
 " The Troubadour hailed the return of spring ; but with 
 him it was a piece of empty ritualism. Chaucer took a true 
 delight in the new green of the leaves and the return of the 
 singing-birds. ... He has never so much as heard of 
 the ' burthen and mystery of all this unintelligible world.' 
 His flowers and trees and birds have never bothered them- 
 selves with Spinoza. He himself sings more like a bird than 
 
CHAUCER 19 
 
 any other poet, because it never occurred to him, as to Goethe, 
 that he ought to do so. He pours himself out in sincere joy 
 and thankfulness. He is the first great poet who really loved 
 outward nature as the source of conscious pleasurable emo- 
 tion. . . . Chaucer took a true delight in the new 
 green of the leaves and the return of singing-birds a delight 
 as simple as that of Robin Hood." Lowell. 
 
 " On the first of May Chaucer rises and goes out into the 
 meadows. Love enters his heart with the balmy air; the 
 landscape is transfigured and the birds begin to sing." 
 Taine. 
 
 " He is, more than all [other] English poets, the poet of 
 the lusty spring, of ' Aprille ' with her ' shovvres sweet ' and 
 the ' foules ' song ; of ' May with all her floures ' and her 
 green ; of the new leaves in the wood and the meadows new 
 powdered with the daisy, the mystic Marguerite of his 
 ' Legend of Good Women. ' A fresh, vernal air blows 
 through all his pages." H. A. Beers. 
 
 " Chaucer had an equal eye for truth of nature and dis- 
 crimination of character ; and his interest in what he saw 
 gave new distinctness and force to his power of observation. 
 Nature is the soul of art : there is a strength as well 
 as a simplicity in the imagination that reposes entirely on 
 nature that nothing else can supply. 
 
 " Chaucer's descriptions of natural scenery . . . have 
 a local truth and freshness which gives the very feeling of 
 the air, the coolness or moisture of the ground." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 " No poet ever loved nature more than Chaucer did ; but 
 it was with a simple, unreflectiye, child-like love. 
 It was nature in her ' first intention/ her most obvious as- 
 pects, that attracted him. . . . It is not on nature as a 
 great whole, much less as an abstraction, that his thought 
 usually dwells. It is the outer world in its most concrete 
 forms and objects with which he delights to interweave his 
 
2O CHAUCER 
 
 poetry the homely scenes of South England, the oaks and 
 other forest trees, the green meadows, quiet fields, and com- 
 fortable farms, as well as the great castles where the nobles 
 dwelt. ... I know not that the habitual forms of Eng- 
 lish landscape, those that are most rural and most unchanged, 
 have ever since found a truer poet, one who brings before the 
 mind the scene and the spirit of it, uncolored by any inter- 
 vention of his own thought or sentiment. And his favorite 
 season it is the May-time. Of this he is never tired of sing- 
 ing."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 " Lover of men and lover of books, Chaucer is no less the 
 lover of nature, for her alone delighting to leave his studies. 
 We must think of him as he shows himself in one 
 of his poems, going out alone in the meadows in the still- 
 ness of early morning and falling on his knees to greet the 
 daisy." Henry S. Pancoast. 
 
 ' How joyously he watches the daisy 
 
 ' Knelyng alway til it unclosed was 
 Uppon the smale, softe, swete, gras* 
 
 and the ' vyolet al newe and fresche perwynke (French per- 
 venche, periwinkle), and the lilye on her stalke grene, and the 
 may-blossoms partie whyte and rede.' How he notes the 
 glimpsing of eyes through the leaves, the squirrels sitting up 
 on the branches ' making feasts,' the hives of bees, the fun of 
 stamping for eels, the rooks' nests on the great trees, and the 
 thousand things showing so strong a love of country sights 
 and sounds, animals, and birds, and such knowledge of them, 
 that we half suspect that he was not brought up as a boy in 
 London town." H. R. Haweis. 
 
CHAUCER 21 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " On every bough the briddes herde I singe, 
 
 With voys of aungel in hir armonye, 
 Som besyed hem hir briddes forth to bringe, 
 The litel conyes to hir pley gunne hye, 
 And further al aboute I gan espye 
 The dredful roo, the buk, the hert, and hinde, 
 Squerels and beestes smale of gentil kinde." 
 
 7 he Parlement of Foules. 
 
 " For May wol have no slogardye anight, 
 The sesoun priketh every gentil herte, 
 And maketh him out of his sleep to sterte, 
 And seieth, ' Arys and do thyn observaunce.' " 
 
 The Knightes Tale. 
 
 11 And anone as I the day aspide, 
 No longer would I in my bed abide, 
 But to a wood that was fast by 
 I went forth alone boldely, 
 And held the way down by a brookes side, 
 Till I came to a laund of white and greene, 
 So faire a one had I never in been, 
 The ground was greene, ypoudred with daisie, 
 The floures and the greves like hie, 
 Al greene and white, was nothing elles scene. 
 
 And the river that I sat upon, 
 It made such a noise as it ron, 
 Accordaunt with the birdes armony, 
 Me thought it was the beste melody 
 That mighte ben yheard of any mon." 
 
 The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. 
 
 7. Sincerity Elevation of Character. " He knew 
 and lived in the society of persons of rank, yet long before 
 Tennyson he placed the kind heart above the coronet and 
 

 22 CHAUCER 
 
 faithfulness over the claims of high descent. Nobility of 
 soul had ever his warmest admiration, without regard to the 
 rank of life in which it was revealed. . . . Chaucer has 
 no animosities and cherishes no grudge." -J. C. Robertson. 
 
 " Here was a healthy, hearty man, so genuine that he need 
 not ask whether he were genuine or no, so sincere as quite to 
 forget his own sincerity, so truly pious that he could be happy 
 in the best world God chose to make, so humane that he loved 
 even the foibles of his kind. Here was a truly epic poet, 
 without knowing it, who did not waste time in considering 
 whether his age were good or bad, but, quietly taking it for 
 granted as the best that ever was or could be for him, has left 
 us such a picture of contemporary life as no man ever painted. 
 He could look to God without abjectness and on 
 man without contempt." Lowell. 
 
 11 The general tenor of his works is decidedly kindly, hon- 
 orable, and sincere, permeated with high Christian feeling. 
 What he says of human happiness and honor and 
 duty could only have been said by a man with a conscience, 
 nursed though he had been through the thorny ways of a 
 court. . . . No one ever uttered loftier words on the 
 meaning of true 'gentrie,' in the sense of gentle birth, or 
 words that better commend themselves to an honest republi- 
 can age, though they were reiterated by a courtier. He puts 
 a very earnest protest into the Wife of Bath's mouth against 
 those who, ' boren of a gentil house . . . n'yl himselve 
 no gentil dedes; ' 'only a villain's sinful dedes makith a 
 cherl,' he says, and follows it up with the prettiest definition 
 of noble descent, quite epigrammatic in its grace and truth: 
 
 ' For gentilesse n' is but the renomee 
 Of thine anncestres.' " 
 
 H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " In many passages he insists on the value of the purity of 
 womanhood and the nobility of manhood, taking the latter 
 to be dependent upon good feeling and courtesy. As he 
 
CHAUCER 23 
 
 says in the Wife of Bath's Tale,' the ' man who is always the 
 most virtuous, and most endeavors to be constant in the per- 
 formance of gentle deeds, is to be taken to be the greatest 
 gentleman. Christ desires that we should derive our gentle- 
 ness from Him, and not from our ancestors, however rich.' " 
 Walter Skeat. 
 
 " He is content to find grace and beauty in truth. He 
 exhibits, for the most part, the naked object, with little drap- 
 ery thrown over it. His metaphors, which are few, are not 
 for ornament but use, and as like as possible to the things 
 themselves. He does not affect to show his power over the 
 reader's mind but the power which his subject has over his 
 own. . . . There is no artificial pompous display, but a 
 strict parsimony of the poet's materials, like the rude simplic- 
 ity of the age in which he lived. . . . The poetry of 
 Chaucer has a religious sanctity about it, connected with the 
 manners and superstition of the age. It has all the spirit of 
 martyrdom. ' ' William Hazlitt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The firste stok fader of gentilesse, 
 
 What man that claymeth gentil for to be, 
 Must folowe his trace and alle his wittes dresse 
 Vertu to sewe and vyces for to flee. 
 For unto vertu longeth dignitee, 
 And noght the revers saufly dar I deme, 
 Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe. 
 
 " The firste stok was ful of rightwisnesse, 
 
 Trewe of his word, sobre, pitous, and free, 
 Clene of his goste and loved besinesse, 
 % Ageinst the vyce of slouthe in honestee ; 
 
 And but his heir love vertu, as dide he, 
 He is noght gentil, thogh he riche seme, 
 Al were he mytre, croune, or diademe." 
 
 A Ballad on Gentilesse. 
 
24 CHAUCER 
 
 " Fly from the prease and dwell with soothfastnesse. 
 
 Suffise unto thy good though it be small ; 
 For horde hath hate and climbing tikelnesse, 
 Prease hath envy, and wele is blent over all ; 
 Savour no more than thee behove shall ; 
 Rede well thy selfe that other folke canst rede, 
 And trouth shall thee deliver, it is no drede." 
 
 Good Counsail. 
 
 " For o thing, sires, saufly dar I seye, 
 That frendes everich other moot obeye, 
 If they wol longe holden compnye, 
 Love wol nat ben constreyned by maistrye ; 
 When maistrie comth, the god of love anon 
 Beteth hise winges, and farewel ! he is gon ! 
 Love is a thing as any spirit free ; 
 Wommen of kinde desiren libertee, 
 And nat to be constreyned as a thral ; 
 And so don men, if I soth seyen shal." 
 
 The Frankeleyns Tale. 
 
 8. Narrative Power. " Chaucer is a great narrative 
 poet. In this respect he has no equal in our tongue. . . . 
 Chaucer's success as a narrative poet is largely due to the ease 
 and fulness with which he makes us enter into his own thoughts 
 and feelings. . . . There is nothing more conspicuous 
 in the ' Canterbury Tales ' than the individuality of their 
 composer. The one distinguishing trait that makes him the 
 great story-teller of the English language is that he seizes upon 
 the central points of interest, and lets everything else go by 
 that does not contribute to the effectiveness of their represen- 
 tation." T. R. Lounsbury. 
 
 " There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, 
 and that is a collection of fine narratives, especially when the 
 narratives are all of different colorings. . . . Chaucer is 
 like a jeweller with his hands full : pearls and glass beads, 
 sparkling diamonds and common agates, black jet and ruby 
 roses, all that history and imagination had been able to gather 
 
CHAUCER 25 
 
 and fashion during three centuries in the East, in France, in 
 Wales, in Provence, in Italy. All that had rolled his way, 
 clashed together, broken, or polished by the stream of centuries, 
 and by the great jumble of human memory, he holds in his 
 hands, arranges it, composes therefrom a long sparkling orna- 
 ment, with twenty pendants, a thousand facets, which by 
 its splendor, varieties, contrasts may attract and satisfy the 
 eyes of those most greedy for amusement and novelty." 
 Taine. 
 
 " Chaucer is a great narrative poet, and in this species of 
 poetry, though the author's personality should never be ob- 
 truded, it yet unconsciously pervades the whole, and commu- 
 nicates an individual quality a kind of flavor of its own. 
 . . . The pleasure Chaucer takes in telling his stories has 
 in itself the effect of consummate skill, and makes us follow all 
 the windings of his fancy with sympathetic interest. His best 
 tales run on like one of our inland rivers, sometimes hasten- 
 ing a little and turning upon themselves in eddies that dimple 
 without retarding the current ; sometimes loitering smoothly, 
 while here and there a quiet thought, a tender feeling, a 
 pleasant image, a golden-hearted verse, opens quietly as a 
 water-lily, to float on the surface without breaking it into 
 ri pples. ' ' Lowell. 
 
 " He is the prince of story-tellers ; and however much he 
 may move others, he is not moved himself. . . . The 
 ' Canterbury Tales ' a story-book than which the world does 
 not possess a better." Alexander Smith. 
 
 " He conducts us through his narratives with facile elo- 
 quence, smoothing over what is unpalatable, waving aside 
 digressions, interspersing easy reflections, never staying too 
 long upon one topic. . . . No poet could be more ani- 
 mated than Chaucer. All his works are full of bright color, 
 fresh feeling, rapid ease, and gaiety of movement. There is 
 no tedious dulness in his descriptions, no lingering in the 
 march of his narrative. With all his loquacity and vivacity, 
 
26 CHAUCER 
 
 he knows when his readers have had enough of one thing, 
 and passes easily on to something else. The ease of his 
 transitions is very remarkable ; ... he always keeps his 
 main subject firmly and clearly in view ; and his well-marked 
 digressions add to the general animation by dispersing the 
 feeling of rigid restraint without tending in the least to pro- 
 duce confusion."- William Minto. 
 
 " He is our greatest story-teller in verse. All the best 
 tales are told easily, sincerely, with great grace, and yet with 
 so much homeliness that a child would understand them." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " A great poet by virtue of his natural gifts, he was the 
 greatest of narrative poets by virtue of his knowledge of man- 
 kind."^. If. Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " This duk, of whom I make mencioun, 
 When he was come almost unto the toun, 
 In al his wele and in his moste pryde, 
 He was war, as he caste his eye asyde, 
 Wher that ther kneled in the hye weye 
 A companye of ladies, tweye and tweye, 
 Ech after other, clad in clothes blake ; 
 But swich a cry and swich a wo they make 
 That in this world nis creature livinge 
 That herde swich another weymentinge, 
 And of this cry they wolde never stenten 
 Til they the reynes of his bredel henten." 
 
 The Knightes Tale. 
 
 " A theef he was, for sothe, of corn and mele, 
 And that a sly and usaunt for to stele. 
 His name was hoten deynous Simkin. 
 A wyf he haclde y-comen of noble kin ; 
 The person of the toun hir fader was. 
 With hir he yaf ful many a panne of bras, 
 For that Simkin sholde in his blood allye. 
 She was y-fostred in a nonnerye ; 
 
CHAUCER 27 
 
 For Simkin wolde no wyf, as he sayde, 
 But she were wel e-norissed and a mayde, 
 To saven his estaat and yomanrye, 
 And she was proud and pert as is a pye." 
 
 The Reeves Tale. 
 
 " At Sarray, in the land of Tartarye, 
 
 Ther dwelte a king that werreyed Russye, 
 Thurgh which ther deyde many a doughty man. 
 This noble king was cleped Cambinskan, 
 Which in his tyme was of so greet renoun 
 That ther nas no-wher in no regioun 
 So excellent a lord in alle thing ; 
 Him lakked noght that longeth to a king. 
 As of the secte of which that he was born 
 He kept his lay, to which that he was sworn ; 
 And the-rto he was hardy, wys, and riche, 
 And pietous and just alwey y-liche ; 
 Sooth of his word, benigne, and honurable, 
 Of his corage as any centre stable." 
 
 The Squieres Tale. 
 
 g. Realism Minuteness Single Strokes Viv- 
 idness. " Other fourteenth century writers can tell a story 
 but none else of that day can bring the actual world 
 of men and women before us with the movement of a Floren- 
 tine procession picture, and with a color and a truth of detail 
 that anticipate the great Dutch masters of painting." 
 T. H. Ward. 
 
 " When Chaucer describes anything, it is commonly by one 
 of those simple and obvious epithets or qualities that are so easy 
 to miss. Is it a woman ? He tells us that she is fresh ; that 
 she has glad eyes ; that every day her beauty newed. . . . 
 Sometimes he describes amply by the merest hint, as where 
 the Friar, before setting himself softly down, drives away 
 the cat. We know without need of more words that he has 
 chosen the snuggest corner. . . . Nothing escapes his 
 sure eye for the picturesque the cut of the beard, the soil of 
 
28 CHAUCER 
 
 armor on the buff jerkin, the rust on the sword, the expression 
 of the eye. . . . Chaucer is the first to break away from 
 the dreary traditional style and give us not merely stories, but 
 the lively pictures of real life as the ever renewed substance 
 of poetry. . . . His parson is still unmatched, though 
 Dryden and Goldsmith have both tried their hands on him." 
 Lowell. 
 
 " Chaucer excels as the poet of manners or of real life. 
 . . . Chaucer most frequently describes things as they are. 
 . . . The characteristic of Chaucer is intensity. . . . 
 As Spenser was the most romantic and visionary, so Chaucer 
 was the most practical of all the great poets, the most a man 
 of business and the world. His poetry reads like history. 
 Everything has a downright reality, at least in the relator's 
 mind. A simile or a sentiment is as if it were given in upon 
 evidence. . . . He speaks of what he wishes to describe 
 with the accuracy, the discrimination of one who relates what 
 has happened to himself, or has had the best information from 
 those who have been eye-witnesses of it. The strokes of his 
 pencil always tell. He dwells only on the essential, on that 
 which would be interesting to the person really concerned : 
 yet, as he never omits any material circumstance; he is prolix 
 from the number of points on which he touches, without being 
 diffuse on any one. . . . The chain of his story is com- 
 posed of a number of fine links, closely connected together, 
 and riveted by a single blow." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " In these [the characters of the ' Canterbury Tales'] his 
 knowledge of the world availed him in a peculiar degree, and 
 enabled him to give such an accurate picture of ancient man- 
 ners as no contemporary nation has transmitted to posterity. 
 It is here that we view the pursuits and employments, the cus- 
 toms and diversions of our ancestors, copied from the life, and 
 represented with equal truth and spirit, by a judge of mankind 
 whose penetration qualified him to discern their foibles or dis- 
 criminating peculiarities and by an artist who understood 
 
CHAUCER 29 
 
 that proper selection of circumstances and those predominant 
 characteristics which form a finished portrait." Thomas 
 Warton. 
 
 " The ' Canterbury Tales ' are as real as anything in Shake- 
 speare or Burns. . . . The prologue, ... in which 
 we make the acquaintance of the pilgrims, is the ripest, most 
 genial and humorous altogether the most masterly thing 
 which Chaucer has left us. In its own way, and within its 
 own limits, it is the most wonderful thing in the language. 
 The people we read about are as real as the people we brush 
 clothes with in the street nay, much more real ; for we not 
 only see their faces and the fashion and texture of their gar- 
 ments, we know also what they think, how they express them- 
 selves, and with what eyes they look out on the world. Chau- 
 cer's art in this prologue is simple perfection. He indulges 
 in no irrelevant description ; he airs no fine sentiments ; he 
 takes no special pains as to style or poetic ornament ; but every 
 careless touch tells, every sly line reveals character ; the de- 
 scription of each man's horse-furniture and array reads like 
 memoir. ' ' Alexander Smith. 
 
 " To read Chaucer closely is really to live for the moment 
 in the fourteenth century, to hear the talk and see the faces 
 of the whole people. Shakespeare never did so much for his 
 time. He gave us philosophy, thoughts, fancy, dramatic 
 action, but we do not get from him a whole century alive 
 again, a whole nation speaking for itself, class by class, the 
 real English home-life ; men and their thoughts at once ; 
 the colors, the manners, the accents, the dress, the characters, 
 the sentiments, the science, town, field, park and river 
 scenery, farm-house, inn, castle, and wharf, all brought back 
 to us, down to the very scent of them, down to the cat driven 
 from the best seat, the pet dog, birds, and the coals on the 
 fire. We get that from Chaucer. . . . His characters are 
 splendidly varied and true to nature." H. R. Haweis. 
 
30 CHAUCER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Blak was his herd, and manly was his face. 
 The cercles of his eyen in his heed 
 They gloweden bitwixe yelow and reed, 
 And lyk a griffon loked he aboute, 
 With kempe heres on his browes stoute ; 
 His limes grete, his braunes harde and stronge, 
 His shuldres brode, his armes rounde and longe. 
 And as the gyse was in his contree 
 Ful hye up-on a char of gold stood he, 
 With foure whyte boles in the trays. 
 In-stede of cote-armure over his harnays, 
 With nayles yelwe and brighte as any gold, 
 He hadde a beres skin, col-black, for- old. 
 His longe heer was kembd bihinde his bak, 
 As any ravenes fether it shoon for-blak." 
 
 The Knightes Tale. 
 
 " This wydwe, of which I telle yow my tale, 
 Sin thilke day that she was last a wyf, 
 In pacience ladde a ful simple lyf, 
 For litel was hir catel and hir rente ; 
 For housbondrye of such as God hir sente, 
 She fond hir-self and eek hir doghtren two. 
 Three large sowes hadde she and namo, 
 Three kyn and eek a sheep that highte Malle. 
 Ful sooty was hir bour, and eek hir halle, 
 In which she eet ful many a sclendre meel." 
 
 The Nonne Preestes Tale. 
 
 " A garden saw I full of blossmy bowes, 
 Upon a river, in a grene mede, 
 Ther as that swetnesse evermore ynow is, 
 With floures whyte, blewe, yelowe, and rede, 
 And colde welle-stremes, no-thing dede, 
 That swommen ful of smale fisshes lighte, 
 With finnes rede and scales silver-brighte." 
 
 The Parlement of Foules. 
 

 CHAUCER 31 
 
 fo. Portrayal of Character. "He is the first great 
 "painter of character, because he is the first great observer of 
 it among European writers. . . . His works contain 
 passages displaying a penetrating insight into the minds of 
 men, as well as a keen eye for their manners, together with 
 a power of generalizing, which, when kept within due bounds, 
 lies at the root of the wise knowledge of human kind so ad- 
 mirable to us in our great essayists from Bacon to Addison 
 and his modern successors." T. H. Ward. 
 
 " Quaint as they [his characters] are, they are the very quin- 
 tessence of human nature. They live yet, fresh and vivid, pas- 
 sionate and strong, as they did on their way to the tomb of St. 
 Thomas upward of five hundred years ago." William Howitt. 
 
 " No author who ever existed (Shakespeare alone except- 
 ed) seizes more powerfully the manners, the humors, and the 
 sentiments of mankind, or delineates them more vigorously. 
 Every point which has relation to the action of 
 the human mind or the modifications of man as he appears 
 in a state of society, is treated by him with a vividness 
 and energy which at once command our sympathy and 
 extort our astonishment. . . . His personages always 
 feel, and we confess the truth of their feelings ; what passes 
 in their minds, or falls from their tongues, has the clear 
 and decisive character which proclaims it human, together 
 with the vividness, subtleness, and delicacy which few au- 
 thors in the most enlightened ages have been equally fortu- 
 nate in seizing." William Godwin. 
 
 " Above all, Chaucer has an eye for character that seems 
 to have caught at once not only mental and physical 
 features, but even its expression in variety of costume an 
 eye, indeed, second only, if it should be called second in 
 some respects, to that of Shakespeare. I know of nothing 
 that may be compared to the prologue to the ' Canterbury 
 Tales,' and to the story of the ' Canon's Yeoman,' before 
 Chaucer. But it is in his characters, especially, that his 
 
32 CHAUCER 
 
 manner is large and free ; for he is painting history, though 
 with the fidelity of a portrait. He brings out strongly the es- 
 sential traits, characteristic of the genus rather than of the in- 
 dividual. . . . William Blake says, ' The characters of 
 Chaucer's Pilgrims are the characters which compose all 
 ages and all nations.' Some of the names and titles are 
 altered by time, but the characters remain forever unal- 
 tered, and consequently they are the physiognomies and lin- 
 eaments of universal human life, beyond which Nature never 
 steps. ... In his outside accessories, it is true, he is 
 sometimes as minute as if he were illuminating a missal. 
 In this he has an artistic purpose. It is here that 
 he individualizes, and while every touch harmonizes with and 
 seems to complete the moral features of the character, he makes 
 us feel that we are among living men and not the abstracted 
 images of men . . . Chaucer, never forgetting the es- 
 sential sameness of human nature, makes it possible, and even 
 probable, that his motley characters should meet on a com- 
 mon footing, while he gives to each the expression that be- 
 longs to him, the result of special circumstances or training. 
 Indeed, the absence of any suggestion of caste cannot fail to 
 strike any reader familiar with the literature on which he is 
 supposed to have formed himself. No characters are at once 
 so broadly human and so definitely outlined as his. Belong- 
 ing, some of them, to extinct types, they continue contem- 
 porary and familiar forever." Lowell. 
 
 " The readers of Chaucer's poetry feel more nearly what 
 the persons he describes must have felt than perhaps those of 
 any other poet. His sentiments are not voluntary effusions 
 of the poet's fancy, but are founded on the natural impulses 
 and habitual prejudices of the characters he has to represent. 
 There is an inveteracy of purpose, a sincerity of feeling, 
 which never relaxes or grows vapid, in whatever they do or 
 say. . . . The picturesque and the dramatic are in him 
 closely blended together and hardly distinguishable ; for he 
 
CHAUCER 33 
 
 principally describes external appearances as indicating char- 
 acter, as symbols of internal sentiment. There is a meaning 
 in what he sees, and it is this that catches his eye by 
 sympathy. . . . [His characters] are every one sam- 
 ples of a kind, abstract definitions of a species. 
 Chaucer, it has been said, numbered the classes of men as 
 Linnaeus numbered the plants. Most of them remain to 
 this day ; others that are obsolete, and may well be dis- 
 pensed with, still live in his description of them." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 "To a certain extent Lowell is right in saying that there 
 is no caste feeling among Chaucer's Pilgrims. . . . But 
 we should greatly misunderstand the delicacy of Chaucer's 
 sense of manners as well as of character if we went away 
 with the impression that in the ' Canterbury Tales ' there 
 is no trace of the distinctions of rank, and that in the pil- 
 grimage there is no respect paid to persons. . . . A line 
 is drawn, though unobtrusively, and with delicate sugges- 
 tive art, between the ' gentles ' and the other pilgrims. If 
 this had not been done, we should have been compelled to 
 say that our poet inaccurately portrayed the life of the times. 
 But he has done it, and done it not by harsh, angular, forced 
 assertion, but easily and naturally in his clear-sighted shaping 
 and working out of his materials. . . . If we fail to per- 
 ceive this contrast between the serious and the ludicrous side 
 of the Canterbury pilgrimage, if we miss the poet's reconcil- 
 iation of the two without repression of either, Chaucer's gen- 
 ius, in so far as regards manners and character, has labored 
 for us in vain." William Minto. 
 
 " He does more [than narrate]. He observes characters, 
 notes their differences, studies the coherence of their parts, en- 
 deavors to bring forward living and distinct persons a thing 
 unheard of in his time, but which the renovators in the six- 
 teenth century, and first among them Shakespeare, will do 
 afterwards. . . . For the first time, in Chaucer, character 
 3 
 
34 CHAUCER 
 
 stands out in relief; its parts are held together; it is no longer 
 an unsubstantial phantom. You may comprehend its past 
 and see its present action. Its externals manifest the personal 
 and incommunicable details of its inner nature and the infinite 
 complexity of its economy and motion. To this day, after 
 four centuries, that character is individualized and typical ; it 
 remains distinct in our memory, like the creations of Shake- 
 speare and Rubens. . . . Chaucer begins with the por- 
 trait of all his narrators, . . . about thirty distinct figures, 
 of every sex, condition, age, each painted with his disposition, 
 age, costume, turns of speech, little significant actions, habits, 
 antecedents, each maintained in his character by his talk and 
 subsequent actions so well, that we can discern here, before 
 any other notion, the germ of the domestic novel as we write 
 it to-day." Taine. 
 
 "Chaucer alone comes near to Shakespeare in that supreme 
 quality of the dramatist which enables him to show the char- 
 acters of- men as they are betrayed by themselves, wholly 
 developed as if from within, not as described from without 
 by an imperfect and prejudiced observer. . . . The pro- 
 cession of Chaucer's Pilgrims is the very march of man on the 
 high-road of life. . . . It [the 'Canterbury Tales'] is the 
 work of a man who knew the manner of that true pilgrimage 
 of life, against which the stout-hearted Wycliff had never 
 preached . ' ' Henry Morley. 
 
 "It is the first time in English poetry that we are brought 
 face to face, not with characters or allegories or reminiscences 
 of the past, but with living and breathing men, men distinct 
 in temper and sentiment as in face or costume or mode of 
 speech ; and with this distinctness of each maintained through- 
 out the story by a thousand shades of expression and action. It 
 is the first time, too, that we meet with the dramatic power 
 which not only creates each character but continues it with its 
 fellows, which not only adjusts each tale or jest to the temper 
 of the person who utters it, but fuses all into a poetic unity. 
 
CHAUCER 35 
 
 It is life in its largeness, its variety, its complexity which sur- 
 rounds us in the ' Canterbury Tales.' . . . And it is life 
 that he loves the delicacy of its sentiment, the breadth of its 
 farce, its laughter and its tears, the tenderness of its Griseldis 
 or its Smollett like adventures of the millers and the clerks. 
 It is this largeness of heart, this wide tolerance, which enables 
 him to reflect man for us as none but Shakespeare has ever re- 
 flected him and to do this with a pathos, a shrewd sense and 
 kindly humor, a freshness and joyousness of feeling, that even 
 Shakespeare has not surpassed." -J. JR. Green. 
 
 " Chaucer's perception of character and his skill in deline- 
 ating it were marvellous. . . . Chaucer's characters are 
 more than portraits of classes : they are people, real, live, 
 individual." R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Wei loved he garleek, oynons, and eek lekes, 
 And for to drinken strong wyn, reed as blood. 
 Than wolde he speke and crye as he were wood. 
 And whan that he wej dronken hadde the wyn, 
 Than wolde he speke no word but Latyn. 
 A fewe termes hadde he, two or th-re, 
 That he had lerned out of som decree ; 
 No wonder is, he herde it al the day ; 
 And eek ye knowen well how that a jay 
 Can clepen ' Watte ' as well as can the pope. 
 But who-so coude in other thing him grope, 
 Thanne hadde he spent al his philosophye ; 
 Ay, ' Questio quid iurisj wolde he crye. 
 He was a gentil harlot and a kinde ; 
 A bettre felawe sholde men noght finde." 
 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 "Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, 
 That of hir smyling was ful simple and coy ; 
 Hir gretteste ooth was but by seynt Loy ; 
 And she was cleped madame Eglentyne. 
 Ful wel sche song the service divyne, 
 
36 CHAUCER 
 
 Entuned in hir nose ful semely ; 
 And Frensh she spak ful faire and fetisly, 
 After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, 
 For Frensh of Paris was to hir unknowe. 
 At mete wel y-taught was she with-alle ; 
 She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle, 
 Ne wette hir fingres in hir sauce depe." 
 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 " Embrouded was he, as it were a mede 
 Al ful of fresshe floures whyte and rede. 
 Singinge he was or floytynge al the day ; 
 He was as fresh as is the month of May. 
 Short was his goune, with sieves long and wyde. 
 Wel coude he sitte on hors and faire ryde. 
 He coude songes make and wel endyte, 
 Juste and eek daunce, and wel purtreye and wryte. 
 So hote he lovede that by nightertale 
 He sleep namore than doth a nightergale. 
 Curteys he was, lowly, and servisable, 
 And carf biforn his fader at the table." 
 
 Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 
 
 m 
 
 II. Coarseness. "It is very misleading to apologize, as 
 some writers on Chaucer do, for the gross obscenity of certain 
 of the tales, on the ground that this was the outspoken fashion 
 of the times that decorum then permitted greater freedom of 
 language. The savor of particular words may have changed 
 since the time of Chaucer ; but then, as now, people with any 
 pretensions to refinement were bound to abstain strictly in the 
 presence of ladies from all ribaldry of speech and manner, on 
 pain of being classed with 'churls' and 'vileins.' 
 And in the 'Canterbury Tales' Chaucer carefully guards him- 
 self against being supposed to be ignorant of this law. The 
 ribald tales are introduced as being the humours of the lower 
 orders, persons ignorant or defiant of the rules of refined soci- 
 ety, and, moreover, as we have seen, excited, intoxicated, out 
 for a pilgrimage as riotous as our pilgrimage to the Derby. 
 
CHAUCER 37 
 
 Such riotous mirth was very far indeed from being the fashion 
 of the time among fashionable people. Mark how careful 
 Chaucer is to shield himself from the responsibility of it. In 
 the Prologue (line 725) he prays his readers of their courtesy 
 not to set down his plainness of speech as his * vileinye.' He 
 is bound to record faithfully every thing that was said, though 
 it had been said by his own brother." William Minto. 
 
 "In spite of some external stains, which those who have 
 studied the influence of manners will easily account for with- 
 out imputing them to any moral depravity, we feel that we 
 can join the pure-minded Spenser in calling him < most sacred, 
 happy spirit.' " Lowell. 
 
 " In all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there 
 was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of the 
 poet. He addressed his own age as contemporaries were 
 doing in France and Italy. . . . Our poet has himself 
 pleaded that, having fixed on his personage, he had no choice 
 to tell any other tale than what that individual would himself 
 have told." Isaac D' Israeli. 
 
 Illustration of this characteristic is evidently uncalled for 
 here. Those who wish, may find representative specimens in 
 "The Somnours Tale," lines 30 to 50 or 95 to 100. 
 
SPENSER, i552(?)-i599 
 
 Biographical Outline. Edmund Spenser, bom in 
 London about 1552; his father was ''gentleman by birth," 
 though a journeyman weaver, of Lancashire family ; Spenser 
 enters the newly founded Merchant Taylors' School, probably 
 in 1561, being one of " certyn poor schollers of the scholls 
 aboute London; " he enters Pembroke Hall, Cambridge, as 
 a sizer in May, 1569 ; during the same year was published a 
 translation of certain sonnets of du Bellay, ascribed to John 
 Van Der Noodt, but doubtless made by Spenser ; all the son- 
 nets were published in 1591 as Spenser's own translation ; at 
 Cambridge he wins distinction in Greek, Latin, French, and 
 Italian, and becomes a close student of Petrarch and Chaucer; 
 as an undergraduate he suffers from poverty and ill-health ; 
 he forms close friendships with Gabriel Harvey (Hobbinoll) 
 and Edward Kirke; in 1576 he receives from. Cambridge the 
 degree of M.A., and leaves the University; he spends some 
 time with kinsfolk near Hurstwood, and there falls in love 
 with " a gentlewoman of no mean house," but she disdains 
 him, and his disappointment is recorded in "The Shepheard's 
 Calendar " (written about this time and published in 1591) 
 and also in "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," written in 
 1591 and published in 1595 ; he leaves Hurstwood for Lon- 
 don at the advice of Harvey, who was in favor with the Earl 
 of Leicester, and as early as 1598 Spenser becomes a member 
 of the household of Leicester House (afterward Essex House) 
 in the Strand ; he writes poems for the amusement of Leices- 
 ter, and apparently acts as his agent in delivering despatches 
 to Leicester's correspondents in foreign countries ; Spenser 
 probab^ Visited Ireland in 1577, and is known to have been 
 
 38 
 
SPENSER 39 
 
 in France and Spain in 1579 ; through Leicester, he meets 
 Sir Philip Sidney, Leicester's nephew, and they become inti- 
 mate friends, to their mutual advantage ; with Sidney and 
 other friends, Spenser forms a literary club called the Areop- 
 agus, where they debate the application of the classical rules 
 of quantity to English metres, though Spenser confesses, "I 
 am more in love with my versifying." 
 
 During 1579 and 1580 Spenser wrote several poems, which 
 have either been lost or have been incorporated into poems 
 under titles different from those given them by Harvey and 
 Spenser ; among these were nine English comedies, a poem 
 entitled " Dreams," which Harvey thought equal to Pe- 
 trarch's "Visions" (this was actually prepared for printing, 
 with a glossary and illustrations) ; " The Dying Pelican " (also 
 prepared for the press), and a prose tract entitled " The Eng- 
 lish Poet ; ' ' some of these last poems are possibly embodied 
 in part in the " Faery Queen ; " while Spenser is a member 
 of Leicester's household he also writes his " Hymns in Honor 
 of Love and Beauty " (published in 1596), and begins the 
 " Faerie Queene ; " " The Shepheard's Calendar " was pub- 
 lished December 5, 1579, with a dedication to Sidney, and 
 bearing the pseudonym " Immerito ; " Spenser's friend, Kirke, 
 supplied notes and a glossary ; the archaic dialect in the 
 " Calendar " is in imitation of the Doric dialect of Theocri- 
 tus, whose pastoral poetry suggested the theme to Spenser ; 
 Colin in the "Calendar" is Spenser, and Alguind is the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury ; the " Calendar" was received with 
 enthusiasm, and passed through five editions in eighteen years; 
 it was translated into Latin by John Dove in 1585, and it 
 gave to Spenser at once the first place among living English 
 poets; in 1580 he published two volumes, consisting of ex- 
 tracts from his correspondence with Harvey and dealing prin- 
 cipally with questions of English scansion. 
 
 In July, 1580, through the influence of Leicester and Sid- 
 ney, Spenser is appointed secretary to Lord Grey, then just 
 
40 SPENSER 
 
 appointed Lord-deputy to Ireland; he reaches Dublin with 
 Grey, August 12, 1580, and remains in Ireland till the close 
 of 1598, excepting two visits to England in 1589-90 and 
 1596; he accompanies Lord Grey on his expedition to Kerry 
 in November, 1580 ; as secretary to Lord Grey he transcribes 
 many official documents, some of which are still extant ; in 
 1582 he receives ^"162 as " rewards " for his secretaryship; 
 in March, 1591, he is appointed clerk to the Irish Court of' 
 Chancery, an office which he holds for several years ; besides 
 his salary he receives much landed property, and he holds a 
 high social position among the English society of Dublin, 
 although Spenser always regarded the Irish as a savage nation ; 
 he continues "The Faery Queene," and writes, about 1586, 
 his elegy on "Astrophel" (Sidney), which was first pub- 
 lished with "Colin Clout" in 1595; in June, 1598, he 
 resigns his clerkship in the Dublin Court of Chancery, and 
 buys the post of Clerk of the Council of Munster ; when, in 
 1586, the property of the earls of Desmond in Munster was 
 declared forfeit and was "planted" with English colonists, 
 Spenser received 3,028 acres ; in 1588 he settles in Kilcol- 
 man Castle, on his Irish estate, Doneraile, County Cork, 
 where a sister acts as his housekeeper ; he has serious trouble 
 with his neighbors, especially one, Viscount Roche, but 
 derives comfort from his intercourse with another neighbor, 
 Sir Walter Ralegh, whom Spenser had doubtless before met 
 in London and who, like Spenser, had received a portion of 
 the confiscated Desmond estate ; Ralegh visits Spenser at Kil- 
 colman, and is shown the first three books of the " The Faery 
 Queene," which he praises highly. 
 
 In October, 1589, Spenser goes with Ralegh to London, 
 determined to publish his poems and to seek Elizabeth's 
 favor; he publishes the first three books of the "Faery 
 Queene " in 1590 ; although the poem is favorably received, 
 Spenser's efforts to secure more congenial occupation than 
 that offered by his Irish clerkship are at first unsuccessful ; 
 
SPENSER 41 
 
 while in London he writes " Daphnaida," an elegy on Lady 
 Douglass, and dedicates it to the Marchioness of Northamp- 
 ton ; it is published at once, and in February, 1590-91, the 
 Queen gives to Spenser a pension of ^50 a year; disap- 
 pointed with the Tneagreness of the pension, he soon returns 
 to Kilcolman Castle, where he writes ''Colin Clout's Come 
 Home Again," late in 1591, though it is not published till 
 1595 ; in 1591 his publisher collected some of Spenser's 
 shorter poems and published them under the title of " Com- 
 plaints," containing " Sundrie small Poems of the World's 
 Vanitie ; " the volume included "The Ruines of Time," 
 " The Teares of the Muses," " Virgil's Gnat " (a translation 
 of the " Culex " erroneously ascribed to Virgil), "Mother 
 Hubberd's Tale," " The Ruins of Rome " (translations from 
 du Bellay), "Muipatmos," "Visions of the World's Vanitie," 
 Bellay's "Visions," and Petrerches "Visions;" most of 
 these poems were, Spenser said, "long rithems composed in 
 the raw conceipt of my youth ; " owing to the satire on Lord 
 Burghley contained in " The Ruines of Time" and that on 
 court follies and vices in " Mother Hubberd's Tale," both 
 poems were "called in;" a proposal by his publisher to 
 issue others of Spenser's neglected or lost pieces was not 
 favorably received. 
 
 In 1592 he falls in love again this time with Elizabeth, 
 daughter of James Boyle, a relative of Richard Boyle ; Spen- 
 ser's sonnets called " Amoretti " are really a diary of his 
 courtship; he is married in June, 1594, probably at Cork, 
 and the poet celebrates the event in his matchless " Epithala- 
 mion ; " meantime his Irish neighbor, Lord Roche, contin- 
 ues his litigation against Spenser, and in February, 1594, 
 wins possession of a part of the poet's estate ; during the 
 same year, and perhaps in consequence, Spenser assigns his 
 clerkship of the Munster Council ; in 1595 Ponsonby, Spen- 
 ser's London publisher, issues the " Amoretti " and " Epr- 
 thalamion " and also "Colin Clout's Come Home Again," 
 
4? SPENSER 
 
 with an appendix containing " Astrophel," Spenser's elegy 
 on his friend Sidney; Ponsonby publishes Books IV., V., 
 and VI. of the "Faery Queene " early in 1596, with alle- 
 gorical illustrations, and binds in the same volume a second 
 edition of the first three books ; the book' becomes very pop- 
 ular, but King James VI., of Scotland, complains to the Eng- 
 lish ambassador concerning reflections on his mother, Mary 
 Queen of Scots, and urges that Spenser be punished ; he is 
 protected, however, by friends at Court, where he appears in 
 the autumn of 1596, still hoping for preferment; while at 
 Greenwich, in September, 1596, he publishes and dedicates 
 to two countesses "Four Hymnes," including his "Hymn 
 in Honor of Love and Beauty," written long before, and the 
 new hymns on " Heavenly Love" and " Heavenly Beauty." 
 In November, 1596, while a guest at Essex House, Spenser 
 writes his " Prothalamion " in honor of the marriage of the 
 two daughters of his host, Edward Somerset, Earl of Worces- 
 ter ; during this London visit of 1596 he writes also his prose 
 pamphlet, " View of the Present State of Ireland," being 
 based on his impressions of " these late wars in Mounster " a 
 pamphlet taking an extreme and most uncharitable view of all 
 Irishmen, whom the poet thought worthy only of extermina- 
 tion; Spenser also completes a work on the antiquities of 
 Ireland, which has been entirely lost; early in 1597 he re- 
 turns to Ireland, depressed in spirits and broken in health ; 
 in September, 1598, he is made Sheriff of Cork ; the famous 
 Tyrone Rebellion had already broken out, and Spenser, as 
 Sheriff, was taken unawares; in October, 1598, the rebels 
 overran all Minister, and burned Kilcolman Castle over Spen- 
 ser's head ; the poet fled to Cork with his wife and four chil- 
 dren ; Ben Jonson declares that one of Spenser's children per- 
 ished in the flames; at Cork he draws up a " brief note of 
 Ireland," in which he appeals to Elizabeth to "show unto 
 these vile caitiffs" the terror of her wrath; in December, 
 1598, Spenser is sent by the President of Munster to London 
 
SPENSER 43 
 
 
 
 with a despatch reporting the progress of the rebellion ; he 
 finds a lodging at an "inn" in King Street, Westminster, 
 where he dies, January 16, 1598-99 ; Ben Jonson and other 
 contemporary writers assert that he died " for lack of bread," 
 but this is hardly credible in view of Spenser's pension and 
 his official- position as bearer of a message to the Court; he 
 was buried by friends in Westminster Abbey ; according to 
 Cowden his hearse was ''attended by poets, and mournful 
 elegies and poems, with the pens that wrote them, were 
 thrown into his tomb." 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON SPENSER. 
 
 Hazlitt, Wm., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, i88.j, G. 
 
 Bell & Co., 45-58. 
 Saintsbury, G., " Elizabethan Literature." London, 1887, Macmillan, 
 
 82-97. 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 4:265-354. 
 Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, E. Moxon, 
 
 21-34- 
 Whipple, E. P., "Literature of the Age of Elizabeth." Boston, 1884, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 189-221. 
 Taine, H. A, "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Henry Holt & Co., I : 194-226. 
 Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 269-337. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, " Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." Philadelphia, 
 
 Carey & Hart, 1 : 65-80. 
 
 Church, R. W., "Spenser." London, 1888, Macmillan, v. index. 
 Minto, W., "Characteristics of English Poets." Edinburgh, 1874, 
 
 Blackwood, 213-238. 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets." London, 1881, Macmillan, 1:275- 
 
 284. 
 Morley, Henry, " English Writers." London, 1892, Cassell & Co., 
 
 9:314-415 and 437-451- 
 Collier, W. F., " History of English Literature." London, 1892, 
 
 Nelson, 120-128. 
 DeVere, A., " Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." London, 1887, Macmillan, 
 
 I-IOO. 
 
44 SPENSER 
 
 Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge, 10-29. 
 Reed, Henry, "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 
 
 i: 113-149- 
 Phillips, M. G., "A Manual of English Literature." New York, 1893. 
 
 Harper, I : 127-171. 
 
 Black-wood's Magazine, 34 : 824-857 (Professor Wilson). 
 Andover Review, 12: 372-385, and 12:372-385, H. S. Pancoast. 
 Edinburgh Review, 7: 203-217 (Sir Walter Scott). 
 Poet Lore, I : 214-223 (Stopford Brooke). 
 North American Review, I2O : 334-394 (J. R. Lowell). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 21:395-405 (E. P. Whipple). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 i. Rich Imagination Idealism. Lamb has fitly 
 bestowed upon Spenser the title of "the poet's poet," and 
 Scott declares that, from Cowley downward, every youth of 
 imagination has been enchanted with the splendid legends of 
 the " Faery Queene." Milton directly acknowledges him as 
 his master. 
 
 "In the world into which Spenser carries us, there is 
 neither time nor space, or rather it is outside of and inde- 
 pendent of them both, and so is purely ideal, or, more 
 truly, imaginary ; yet it is full of form, color, and all earthly 
 luxury, and so far if not real yet apprehensible by the senses. 
 He was not long in choosing between an unreality 
 which pretended to be real and those everlasting realities of 
 the mind which seem unreal only because they lie beyond 
 the horizon of the every-day world and become visible only 
 when the mirage of fancy lifts them up and hangs them in 
 an ideal atmosphere. ... I have called the world to 
 which Spenser transports us a world of unreality. I have 
 wronged him. It is from pots and pans and stocks and futile 
 gossip and inch-long politics that he emancipates us, and 
 makes us free of that to-morrow, always coming and never 
 come, where ideas shall reign supreme. He lifts everything, 
 
SPENSER 45 
 
 not beyond recognition, but to an ideal distance, where no 
 mortal, I had almost said human, speck is visible. Instead 
 of the ordinary bridal gifts, he hallows his wife with an 
 Epithalamion fit for a conscious goddess. . . . His 
 fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, un- 
 realizes everything at a touch. . . . The language and 
 verse of Spenser at his best have an ideal lift in them, and 
 there is scarcely any of our poets who can so hardly help be- 
 ing poetical. ... He who, when his singing robes were 
 on, could never be tempted nearer to the real world than 
 under some subterfuge of pastoral or allegory. ... It 
 is evident that to him the Land of Faery was an unreal world 
 of picture and illusion, in which he could shut himself up 
 from the actual, with its shortcomings and failures. . . . 
 [' The Faery Queene ' is] full of life and light and the other - 
 wcrldliness of poetry. . . . This place, somewhere be- 
 tween mind and matter, between soul and sense, between the 
 actual and the possible, is precisely the region which Spenser 
 assigns to the poetic sensibility of impression. . . . His 
 fancy, habitually moving about in worlds not realized, un- 
 realizes everything at a touch. . . . Other poets have 
 held their mirrors up to nature, mirrors that differ very widely 
 in the truth and beauty of the images they reflect ; but 
 Spenser's is a magic glass, in which we see few shadows cast 
 back from actual life, but visionary shapes conjured up by 
 the wizard's art from some confusedly remembered past or 
 some impossible future; it is like one of those still pools of 
 mediaeval legend which covers some sunken city of the antique 
 world ; a reservoir in which all our dreams seem to have been 
 gathered. As we float upon it, we see that it pictures faithfully 
 enough the summer clouds that drift over it, the trees that 
 grow about its margin, but in the midst of these shadowy 
 echoes of actuality we catch faint tones of bells that seem blown 
 to us from beyond the horizon of time, and looking down into 
 the clear depths, catch glimpses of towers and far -shining 
 
46 SPENSER 
 
 knights and peerless dames that waver and are gone. Is it a 
 world that ever was, or shall be, or can be, or but a delu- 
 sion ? Spenser's world, real to him, is real enough for us to 
 take a holiday in, and we may well be content with it when 
 the earth we dwell on is often too real to allow of such vaca- 
 tions. It is the same kind of world that Petrarca's Laura 
 has walked in for five centuries with all ears listening for the 
 music of her footfall. . . . He is a standing protest 
 against the tyranny of the commonplace, and sows the seeds 
 of a noble discontent with prosaic views of life and the dull 
 uses to which it may be put." Lowell. 
 
 " He began to believe, with more than the usual faith of 
 the poet, in the beautiful or terrible or fantastic shapes with 
 which his fancy was peopled. . . . And it was this 
 wonderful and various troop of ideal shapes, palpable to his 
 own eye and domesticated to his own heart, that he sent 
 forth in an endless succession of pictures through the magical 
 pages of the ' Faery Queene.' . . . The inwardness of 
 Spenser's genius, the constant reference of his creative faculty 
 to internal ideals rather than to objective facts, has given his 
 poem a special character of remoteness. . . . K is cheer- 
 fulness has no connection with mirth, but springs from his 
 perception of an ideal life, which has become a reality to his 
 heart and imagination." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " In Spenser, we wander in another world among ideal be- 
 ings. The poet takes and lays us in the lap of a lovelier 
 nature, by the sound of softer streams, among greener hills 
 and fairer valleys. He paints nature, not as we find it, but 
 as we expected to find it, and fulfils the delightful promise of 
 our youth. He waves the wand of enchantment, and at once 
 embodies airy beings and throws a delicious veil over all 
 actual objects. The two worlds of reality and of fiction are 
 poised on the wings of his imagination." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Spenser's power of taking up real objects, persons, and 
 incidents, of plunging these in some solvent of the imagina- 
 
SPENSER 47 
 
 tion, and then of recreating them the same and not the 
 same is manifest throughout. Everything has been sub- 
 mitted to the shaping power of the imagination ; everything 
 has been idealized ; yet Spenser does not remove from real 
 life, does not forsake his own country and his own time. 
 The mere visible shows of Spenser's poem are in- 
 deed goodly enough to beguile a summer's day in some old 
 wood and to hold us from morning to evening in a waking 
 dream. " Edward Dowden. 
 
 " He was pre-eminently a creator and a dreamer, and that 
 most naturally, instinctively, unceasingly. . . . This 
 fount of living and changing forms is inexhaustible in Spen- 
 ser ; he is always imaging ; it is his specialty. He has but 
 to close his eyes and apparitions arise ; they abound in him, 
 crowd, overflow; in vain he pours them forth; they con- 
 tinually float up, more copious and more dense. . . . To 
 unfold these epic faculties and to display them in the sub- 
 lime region where his soul is naturally at home, he requires 
 an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, with 
 personages who could hardly exist, and in a world which 
 could never be. . . . Magic is the mould of his mind, 
 and impresses its shape upon all that he imagines or thiftks. 
 Involuntarily he robs objects of their ordinary form. If he 
 looks at a landscape, after an instant he sees it quite differ- 
 ently. He carries it, unconsciously, into an enchanted 
 land ; the azure heaven sparkles like a canopy of diamonds, 
 meadows are clothed with flowers, a biped population flutters 
 in the balmy air, palaces of jasper shine among the trees, 
 radiant ladies appear, carved balconies above galleries of 
 emerald. This unconscious toil of mind is like the slow 
 crystallizations of nature. A moist twig is cast into the 
 bottom of a mine, and is brought out again a hoop of dia- 
 monds. . . . He leads us to the summit of fairy-land, 
 soaring above history, on that extreme verge where objects 
 vanish and pure idealism begins. . . . We perceive 
 
48 SPENSER 
 
 that his characters are not flesh and blood, and that all these 
 brilliant phantoms are phantoms and nothing more. We 
 take pleasure in their brilliancy without believing in their 
 substantiality ; we are interested in their doings without troub- 
 ling ourselves about their misfortunes. We know that their 
 tears and cries are not real. Our emotion is purified and 
 raised. We do not fall into gross illusions ; we have that 
 gentle feeling of knowing ourselves to be dreaming. We, 
 like him, are a thousand leagues from actual life, beyond the 
 pangs of painful pity, unmixed terror, violent and bitter 
 hatred. We entertain only refined sentiments, partly 
 formed, arrested at the very moment they were about to af- 
 fect us with too sharp a stroke. . . . He is not yet 
 settled and shut in by that species of exact common-sense 
 which was to bound and cramp the whole modern civiliza- 
 tion. In his heart he inhabits the poetic and shadowy land 
 from which men were daily drawing further and further 
 away. ... He enters straightway upon the strangest 
 dreams of the old story-tellers without astonishment, like a 
 man who has still stranger dreams of his own. Enchanted 
 castles, monsters and giants, duels in the woods, wandering 
 ladies, all spring up under his hands, the mediaeval fancy with 
 the mediaeval generosity, and it is just because the world is 
 unreal that it so suits his humour. Imagination was never 
 more prodigal or inventive." Tame. 
 
 "To the last it [his genius] moved in a world which was 
 not real, which never had existed, which, anyhow, was only 
 a world of memory and sentiment. He never threw himself 
 frankly upon human life as it is ; he always viewed it through 
 a veil of mist which greatly altered its true colours, and often 
 distorted its proportions. . . . The spell is to be found 
 in the quaint stateliness of Spenser's imaginary world and its 
 representatives. . . . The conventional supposition was 
 that at the Court, though everyone knew better, all was per- 
 petual sunshine, perpetual holiday, perpetual triumph, per- 
 
SPENSER 49 
 
 petual love-making. It was the happy reign of the good and 
 wise and lovely. It was the discomfiture of the base, the 
 faithless, the wicked, the traitorous. This is what is reflected 
 in Spenser's poem : at once, its stateliness (for there was no 
 want of grandeur and magnificence in the public scene ever 
 before Spenser's imagination) and its quaintness, because the 
 whole outward apparatus of representation was borrowed 
 from what was past, or from what did not exist, and implied 
 surrounding circumstances in ludicrous contrast with fact." 
 . W. Church. 
 
 "To judge from internal evidence, no man ever lived 
 more exclusively in and for poetry than Spenser. We try 
 in vain for any term to express the voluptuous complete- 
 ness of his immersion in the colours and music of poetry. He 
 was a man of reserved and gentle disposition, and he turned 
 luxuriously from the rough world of facts to the ampler ether, 
 the diviner air, the softer and more resplendent forms of 
 Arcadia and the delightful land of Faery. While the drama- 
 tists were laboring to make the past present, his imagination 
 worked in an opposite line: his effort was to remove hard, 
 clear, visible, and tangible actualities to dreamy regions and 
 there to reproduce them in a glorified state with softer and 
 warmer forms and colours. . . . His own Pastoral land and 
 Faery land he had furnished with a geography, a population, 
 and a history of their own, and there chiefly his imagination 
 loved to dwell and pursue its creative work." William Minto. 
 
 " Spenser is the farthest removed from the ordinary cares 
 and haunts of the world of all the poets that ever wrote except, 
 perhaps, Ovid ; and this, which is the reason why- men of 
 business and the world do not like him, constitutes his most 
 bewitching charm with the poetical. . . . The poetic 
 faculty is so abundantly and beautifully predominant in him 
 above every other . . . that he has always been felt by 
 his countrymen to be what Charles Lamb called him, ' the 
 poet's poet.' " Leigh Hunt. 
 4 
 
50 SPENSER 
 
 " If they [readers] want poetry, if they want to be trans- 
 lated' from a world which is not one of beauty into a world 
 where the very uglinesses are beautiful, into a world of per- 
 fect harmony in color and sound, of an endless sequence of 
 engaging event and character, of noble passions and actions 
 not lacking in their due contrast, then let them go to Spenser 
 with a certainty of satisfaction." George Saintsbury. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Bring with you all the Nymphs that you can heare 
 
 Both of the rivers and the forrests greene 
 And of the sea that neighbours to her neare : 
 
 Al with gay girlands goodly wel beseene. 
 And let them also with them bring in hand 
 
 Another gay girland, 
 For my fayre love of lillyes and of roses. 
 
 And let the ground whereas her foot shall tread 
 For feare the stones her tender foot should wrong, 
 Be strewed with fragrant flowers all along, 
 And diapred lyke the discolored mead." 
 
 Epithalamion. 
 
 " Of fayre Elisa [Elizabeth] be your silver song, 
 
 That blessed wight. 
 The flowre of virgins ; may shee flourish long 
 
 In princely plight ! 
 
 For shee is Syrinx daughter without spotte, 
 Which Pan, the shepheard's God, of her begot : 
 
 So sprong her grace 
 
 Of heavenly race, 
 No mortall blemishe may her blotte. 
 
 " See, where she sits upon the grassie greene, 
 
 (O seemely sight !) 
 
 Yclad in scarlot, like a mayden Queen, 
 And ermines white : 
 
SPENSER 51 
 
 Upon her head a Cremosin coronet, 
 With damask roses and daffodillies set ; 
 
 Bay leaves betweene, 
 
 And primroses greene, 
 Embellish the sweete violete." 
 
 The Shepheards Calendar. 
 
 " A satyre's sonne, yborne in forrest wyld, 
 
 By straunge adventure as it did betyde, 
 And there begotten of a lady myld, 
 
 Fayre Thyamis, the daughter of Labryde ; 
 That was in sacred bandes of wedlocke tyde 
 
 To Therion, a loose, unruly swayne, 
 Who had more joy to raunge the forrest wyde, 
 
 And chase the salvage beast with busie payne, 
 Then serve his ladies love, and waste in pleasures vayne." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 2. Incongruity Artificiality. Spenser has been gen- 
 erally criticised for allowing the " mystic enthusiasm " of his 
 genius to carry him into frequent inconsistencies. Campbell 
 calls his shepherds "parsons in disguise, who converse about 
 heathen divinities and points of Christian theology." 
 
 " Spenser's design was too large and complicated for his 
 imagination to grasp as a whole. It was the necessary condition 
 of a poem thus sociably blending Christian and Pagan beliefs, 
 Platonic ideas and barbaric superstitions, that its action should 
 occur in what Coleridge happily calls mental space. Truth 
 of scenery, truth of climate, truth of locality, truth of costume, 
 could have no binding authority in the everywhere and no- 
 where of fairy land. . . . It is objected, for example, 
 that, in his enumeration of the trees in one of his forests, he 
 associates trees which in nature do not coexist ; but his forest 
 is fairy land. The form of Spenser's ' Shepherd's Calen- 
 dar ' is absurdly artificial, if looked at merely from the out- 
 side, but that is not, perhaps, the wisest way to look at any- 
 thing, except a jail. . . . The spirit of it is fresh and 
 original. . . . There is something fairly ludicrous in 
 
52 SPENSER 
 
 such a duality as that of Prince Arthur and the Earl of Leices- 
 ter, Arthegall and Lord Gray, and Belphcebe and Eliza- 
 beth. The reality seems to heighten the improbability, already 
 hard enough to manage. ... To reign in the air was 
 certainly Spenser's function, . . . but being too poetical 
 is the rarest fault of poets. . . . What practical man 
 ever left such an heirloom to his countryman as the ' Faery 
 Queene? ' . . . The bent of his mind was toward a Pla- 
 tonic mysticism." Lowell. 
 
 " Here and there, amid armor and passages of arms, he 
 distributes satyrs, nymphs, Diana, Venus, like Greek statues 
 amid the turrets and lofty trees of an English park. There is 
 nothing forced in the union ; the ideal epic, like a superior 
 heaven, receives and harmonizes the two worlds ; a beautiful 
 pagan dream carries on a beautiful dream of chivalry ; the 
 link consists in the fact that they are both beautiful. At this 
 elevation the poet has ceased to observe the differences of 
 races and civilizations. He can introduce into his picture 
 whatever he will ; his only reason is, ' That suited ; ' and 
 there could be no better. Under the glossy-leaved oaks, by 
 the old trunk so deeply rooted in the ground, he can see two 
 knights cleaving each other and the next instant a company 
 of Fauns, who come there to dance. The beams of light 
 which have poured down upon the velvet moss can reveal the 
 dishevelled locks and white shoulders of nymphs. Do we not 
 see it in Rubens ? And what signify discrepancies in the 
 happy and sublime illusions of fancy ? Are there more dis- 
 crepancies ? Who perceives them ? Who feels them ? Who 
 does not feel, on the contrary, that, to speak the truth, there 
 is but one world, that of Plato and the poets; that actual 
 phenomena are but outlines mutilated, incomplete, and 
 blurred outlines wretched abortions scattered here and there 
 on Time's track, like fragments of clay, half moulded, then 
 cast aside, lying in an artist's studio ; that, after all, invisible 
 forces and ideas, which forever renew the actual existences, 
 
SPENSER 53 
 
 attain their fulfilment only in imaginary existences ; and that 
 the poet, in order to express nature in its entirety, is obliged 
 to embrace in his sympathy all the ideal forms by which 
 nature reveals itself? ... In fact, there are six poems, 
 each of a dozen cantos, in which the action is ever diverging 
 and converging again, becoming confused and starting again ; 
 and all these imaginings of antiquity and of the Middle Ages 
 are, I believe, combined in it. The knight * pricks along the 
 plaine,' among the trees, and at a crossing of the paths meets 
 other knights with whom he engages in combat ; suddenly, 
 from within a cave, appears a monster, half woman and half 
 serpent, surrounded by a hideous offspring; further on, a giant 
 with three bodies ; then a dragon, great as a hill, with sharp 
 talons and vast wings. For three days he fights him, and, 
 twice overthrown, he comes to himself only by aid of ' a 
 gracious ointment. ' After that there are savage tribes to be 
 conquered, castles surrounded by flames to be taken. Mean- 
 while ladies are wandering in the midst of forests on white 
 palfreys, exposed to the assaults of miscreants, now guarded 
 by a lion which follows them. Magicians work manifold 
 charms; palaces display their festivities; tilt-yards provide 
 endless tournaments; sea-gods, nymphs, fairies, kings inter- 
 mingle in these feasts, surprises, dangers." Taine. 
 
 " His own errors are the confusion and inconsistency ad- 
 mitted in the stories and allegorical personages of the ancients 
 and the absurd mixture of Christian and heathenish allusions." 
 Thomas Chalmers. 
 
 " To the last it [his genius] allied itself in form, at least, 
 with the artificial. ... A fantastic basis, varying ac- 
 cording to the conventions of the fashion, was held essential 
 for the representation of the ideal. ... A masquerade 
 was necessary. . . . Spenser submitted to this fashion 
 from first to last. When first he ventured on a considerable 
 poetic enterprise, he spoke his thoughts, not in his own name, 
 nor as his contemporaries ten years later did, through the 
 
54 SPENSER 
 
 mouth of characters in a tragic or comic drama, but through 
 imaginary rustics, to whom everyone else in the world was a 
 rustic, and lived among the sheep-folds, with a background 
 of downs or vales or fields and the open sky above. . . . 
 At first acquaintance, the ' Faery Queene ' to many of us has 
 been disappointing. It has seemed not only antique but ar- 
 tificial. It has seemed fantastic. It has seemed, we cannot 
 help avowing, tiresome. It is not till the early appearances 
 have worn off and we have learned to make many allowances 
 and to surrender ourselves to the feelings and the standards 
 by which it claims to affect and govern us that we really find 
 under what noble guidance we are proceeding and what subtle 
 and varied spells are ever around us. . . . It seems to 
 us odd that peaceful sheep-cotes and love-sick swains should 
 stand for the world of the Tudors and Guises, or that its cun- 
 ning statecraft and relentless cruelty should be represented by 
 the generous follies of an imaginary chivalry. But it was the 
 fashion which Spenser found, and he accepted it. ... 
 Strong in the abundant but unsifted learning of his day, a 
 style of learning which, in his case, was strangely inaccurate, 
 he not only mixed the past with the present, fairy-land with 
 politics, mythology with the most serious Christian ideas, but 
 he often mixed together the very features which are most dis- 
 cordant in the colors, forms, and methods by which he sought 
 to produce the effect of his pictures. . . . There is a 
 majestic unconsciousness of all violations of probability and 
 of the strangeness of the combinations which it unrolls before 
 us. ... The perpetual love-making, as one of the first 
 duties and necessities of a noble life, the space which it must 
 fill in the cares and thoughts of all gentle and high-reaching 
 spirits, ... all this is so far apart from what we know 
 of actual life, the life not merely of work and business but the 
 life of affection and even of passion, that it makes the picture 
 of which it is so necessary a part seem to us in the last degree 
 unreal, unimaginable, grotesquely ridiculous. ... It is, 
 
SPENSER 55 
 
 of course, a purely artificial reading of the facts of human life 
 and feeling. This all-absorbing, all-embracing passion of love, 
 at least this way of talking about it, was the fashion of the 
 Court. Further, it was the fashion of poetry, which he in- 
 herited ; and he was not the man to break through the strong 
 bounds of custom and authority. He took what he found ; 
 what was his own was his treatment of it. He did not trouble 
 himself with inconsistencies or see absurdities and incongru- 
 ities." J?. W. Church. 
 
 " Shepherds in real life do not sit in the shade playing on 
 pan-pipes, improvising songs for wagers of lambs and curiously 
 carved bowls, and discoursing in rhymed verse about morality, 
 religion, and politics. . . . But we miss the whole in- 
 tention and effect of the poetry if we exact from the poet an 
 adherence to the conditions of the actual life of shepherds. 
 The picturesque environment of hill, wood, dale, silly sheep, 
 and ravenous wild beasts is all that the poet cares for : if he 
 helps us to remember that we are amongst such scenery, he 
 has fulfilled his design. . . . If we would enjoy Spenser's 
 Arcadia, we must simply let ourselves float into a dreamland 
 of unsubstantial form and colour. The pastoral surroundings 
 are of value only in so far as they colour and transfigure the 
 sentiments of the poetry. . . . Spenser has been accused 
 of bad taste in mixing up heathen mythology with the nar- 
 ratives of the Bible. He represents Tantalus and Pontius 
 Pilate suffering in the same place of punishment. The answer 
 that wicked men of all ages and creeds may reasonably be 
 supposed to suffer together, is complete. . . . He has 
 been accused of extravagant violations of probability. To 
 this it may be answered that, when we consent to be intro- 
 duced to Faery land, we sign a dispensation from the ordinary 
 conditions of life." William Minto. 
 
56 SPENSER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Much can they praise the trees so straight and high, 
 
 The sailing pine ; the cedar proud and tall ; 
 The vine-prop elm ; the poplar never dry ; 
 
 The builder oak, sole king of forests all ; 
 The aspen good for staves ; the cypress funeral ; 
 
 The laurel, meed of mighty conquerors 
 And poets sage ; the fir that weepeth still ; 
 
 The willow, worn of forlorn paramours ; 
 The yew, obedient to the bender's will ; 
 The birch for shafts ; the sallow for the mill ; 
 
 The myrrh, sweet-bleeding in the bitter wound ; 
 The war-like beech, the ash for nothing ill ; 
 
 The fruitful olive and the plaintane round." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 " The god of Shepheards, Tityrus, is dead, 
 
 Who taught me homely, as I can, to make ; 
 He, whilst he lived, was the soveraigne head 
 
 Of shepheards all that bene with love ytake ; 
 Well couth he wayle his woes, and lightly slake 
 
 The flames which love within his heart had bredd, 
 And tell us mery tales to keepe us wake, 
 
 The while our sheep about us safely fedde. 
 Nowe dead he is, and lyeth wrapt in lead, 
 
 (Oh ! why should Death on him such outrage show ? ) 
 And all hys passing skil with hym is fledde, 
 
 The fame whereof doth dayly greater growe. 
 But if on me some little drops would flow 
 
 Of that the spring was in his learned hedde, 
 I woulde learne these woods to wayle my woe, 
 
 And teach the trees their trickling teares to shedde." 
 
 The Shepheards Calendar. 
 
 " It there befell, as I the fields did range 
 
 Fearlesse and free, a faire young Lionesse, 
 White as the native rose before the chaunge 
 
 Which Venus' blood did in her leaves impresse. 
 
SPENSER 57 
 
 I spied playing on the grassie playne 
 
 Her youthfull sports and kindlie wantonnesse, 
 That did all other beasts in beawtie staine. 
 
 Much was I moved at so goodly sight, 
 Whose like before mine eye had seldome scene, 
 
 And gan to cast how I her compasse might, 
 And bring to hand that yet had never beene ; 
 
 So well I wrought with mildnes and with paine, 
 That I her caught disporting on the greene, 
 
 And brought away fast bound with silver chaine." 
 
 Daphnaida. 
 
 Exquisite Melody. Spenser was a great metrician. 
 " All poets," says Professor Wilson, " have, since Warton's 
 time, agreed in thinking the Spenserian stanza the finest ever 
 conceived by the soul of man." Spenser was indeed to 
 prove 
 
 " That no tongue hath the muse's heired 
 For verse, and that sweet music to the ear 
 Struck out of rhyme, so naturally as this." 
 
 " He had that subtle perfection of phrase and that happy co- 
 alescence of music^ and meaning, where each reinforces the 
 other, that define a man as poet and make all ears converts 
 and partisans. . . . No other English poet has found the 
 variety and compass which enlivened the octave stanza under 
 his sensitive touch. . . . The music makes great part of 
 the meaning, and leads the thought along its pleasant paths. 
 He found the octave stanza not roomy enough, so 
 first ran it over into another line, and then ran that added 
 line over into an Alexandrine, in which the melody of one 
 stanza seems forever longing and feeling forward after that 
 which is to follow. . . . His great glory is that he taught 
 his own language to sing and move to measure harmonious 
 and noble. The service which Spenser did to our literature 
 by this exquisite sense of harmony is incalculable. His fine 
 ear, abhorrent of barbarous dissonance, his dainty tongue, 
 
58 SPENSER 
 
 that loves to prolong the relish of a musical phrase, made 
 possible the transition from the cast-iron stiffness of * Ferrex 
 and Porrex ' to the Damascus pliancy of Fletcher and Shake- 
 speare. . . . There is no ebb and flow in his meter 
 more than on the shores of the Adriatic, but wave follows 
 wave with equable gainings and recessions, the one sliding 
 back in fluent music to be mingled with and carried forward 
 by the next. . . . They [Spenser's dreams] seem singing 
 to you as the sirens to Guyon, and we linger like him."- 
 Lowell. 
 
 " What he did was to reveal to English ears as it had 
 never been revealed before, at least since the days of Chaucer, 
 the sweet music, the refined grace, the inexhaustible versatil- 
 ity of the English tongue. . . . There is one portion of 
 the beauty of the ' Faery Queene ' which, in its perfection and 
 fulness, had never yet been reached in English poetry. This 
 was the music and melody of his verse. It was this wonder- 
 ful, almost unfailing, sweetness of numbers which probably 
 as much as anything else set the ' Faery Queene ' at once above 
 all contemporary poetry. Spenser was the first to show that 
 he had acquired a command over what had hitherto been 
 heard only in exquisite fragments, passing too soon into 
 roughness and confusion. It would be too much to say that 
 his cunning never fails, that his ear is never dull or off its 
 guard. But when the length and magnitude of the composi- 
 tion are considered, with the restraints imposed by the new 
 nine-line stanza, however convenient it may have been, the 
 vigor, the invention, the volume and rush of language, and 
 the keenness and truth of ear amid its diversified tasks are in- 
 deed admirable, which could keep up so prolonged and so 
 majestic a stream of original and varied poetical melody. If 
 his stanzas are monotonous, it is with the grand monotony 
 of the sea-shore, where billow follows billow, each swelling 
 diversely, and broken into different curves and waves upon its 
 mounting surface, till at last it falls over and spreads and 
 
SPENSER 59 
 
 rushes up in a last long line of foam upon the beach." 
 R. W. Church. 
 
 " Spenser's verse is like a river, wide and deep and strong, 
 but moderating its waves and conveying them all in a steady, 
 soft, irresistible sweep forward. . . . No poem runs with 
 such an entire absence of effort, with such an easy eloquence, 
 with such an effect, as has been said already, of flowing water 
 as the ' Faery Queene ' the inimitably fluent and velvet me- 
 dium which seems to lull some readers to inattention by its 
 very smoothness and deceive others into a belief in its lack of 
 matter by the very finish and brilliancy of its form." George 
 Saintsbury. 
 
 "His best thoughts were born in music. The spirit of 
 poetry is not only felt in his sentiments and made visible in 
 his imagery, but it steals out in the recurring chimes of his 
 complicated stanza." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "To get a full notion of Spenser's power of 'ravishing 
 human sense' with word-music, one must read at least a 
 canto, if not a whole book of the 'Faery Queen.' The 
 dreamy, melodious softness of his numbers and his ideas has 
 something of the luxurious charm that the song of the mer- 
 maids had for the ear of Guyon." William Minto. 
 
 " Then comes the ' Epithalamion ' the marriage-song 
 made by the poet himself for his own bride, in which the 
 sweet music that runs through all Spenser's verse, and makes it 
 answerable to Milton's praise of divine philosophy as 'a per- 
 petual feast of nectared sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns,' 
 fills us with something like his own sense of fullest earthly 
 joy." Henry Morley. 
 
 " His versification is almost perpetual honey." Leigh 
 Hunt. 
 
60 SPENSER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Behold, whiles she before the altar stands, 
 Hearing the holy priest that to her speakes, 
 And blesseth her with his two happy hands, 
 How the red roses flush up in her cheekes, 
 And the pure snow, with goodly vermill stayne, 
 Like crimsin dyde in grayne : 
 That even th' angels, which continually 
 About the sacred altare doe remaine, 
 Forget their service and about her fly, 
 Ofte peeping in her face, that seems more fayre 
 The more they on it stare. 
 But her sad eyes, still fastened on the ground, 
 Are governed with goodly modesty, 
 That suffers not one looke to glaunce awry, 
 Which may let in a little thought unsownd. 
 Why blush ye, Love, to give to me your hand, 
 The pledge of all our band ! 
 Sing, ye sweet Angels, Alleluya sing, 
 That all the woods may answere, and your eccho ring." 
 
 Epithala m ion. 
 
 11 It was upon a holiday, 
 
 When shepheardes groomes han leave to playe, 
 I cast to goe a shooting. 
 Long wandring up and downe the land 
 With bowe and bolts in either hand, 
 For birds in bushes tooting *, 
 At length within an Yvie todde * *, 
 (There shrouded was the little God) 
 I heard a busie bustling. 
 I bent my bolt against the bush, 
 Listening if anything did rushe, 
 But then heard no more rustling : 
 
 With that sprong forth a naked swayne 
 With spotted wings, like Peacock's trayne, 
 
SPENSER 6l 
 
 And laughing lope to a tree ; 
 
 His gylden quiver at his backe, 
 
 And silver bowe, which was but slacke, 
 
 Which lightly he bent at me : 
 
 That seeing, I levelde againe 
 
 And shott at him with might and maine, 
 
 As thick as it had hayled." 
 
 The Shepheards Calendar. 
 
 * 
 
 " Ne suffereth it [love] uncomely idlenesse, 
 In his free thought to build her sluggish nest ; 
 Ne suffereth it thought of ungentlenesse 
 Ever to creepe into his noble brest ; 
 But to the highest and the worthiest 
 Lifteth it up that els would lowly fall : 
 It lettes not fall, it lettes it not to rest ; 
 It lettes not scarse this prince to breath at all. 
 But to his first poursuit him forward still doth call." 
 
 The Faery Qucene. 
 
 . Perception of Beauty Sensitiveness. "Spen- 
 der's perception of beauty of all kinds was singularly and 
 characteristically quick and sympathetic. It was one of his 
 great gifts ; perhaps the most special and unstinted. Except 
 Shakespeare, who had it with other and greater gifts, no one 
 in that time approached to Spenser in feeling the presence of 
 that commanding and mysterious idea, compounded of so 
 many things, yet of which the true secret escapes us still, to 
 which we give the name of beauty. ... A beautiful 
 scene, a beautiful person, a beautiful poem, a mind and char- 
 acter with that combination of charms, which, for want of 
 another word, we call by that half-spiritual, half-material word 
 ' beautiful,' at once set his imagination at work to respond to 
 it and reflect it. ... Say what we will, and a great 
 deal may be said, of his lavish profusion, his heady and un- 
 controlled excess, in the richness of picture and imagery in 
 which he indulges, still there it lies before us, like the most 
 
62 SPENSER 
 
 gorgeous of summer gardens, in the glory and brilliancy of its 
 varied blooms, in the wonder of its strange forms of life, in the 
 changefulness of its exquisite and delicious scents. No one 
 who cares for poetic beauty can be insensible to it. He may 
 prefer something more severe and chastened. He may observe 
 on the waste of wealth and power. He may blame the prodi- 
 gal expense of language and the long spaces which the poet 
 takes up to produce his effect. He may often dislike or dis- 
 trust the moral aspect of the poet's impartial sensitiveness 
 to all outward beauty. . . . But there is no gainsaying 
 the beauty which never fails and disappoints, open the poem 
 where you will. There is no gainsaying its variety, often so 
 unexpected and novel." . W. Church. 
 
 "He had that perception of the loveliness of things, and 
 that joy in the perception, which makes continual poetic crea- 
 tion a necessity of existence. . . . ' The Faery Queene ' 
 proves that the perception of the beautiful can make the heart 
 more abidingly glad than the perception of the ludicrous." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " He is, of all our poets, the most truly sensuous, using the 
 word as Milton probably meant it when he said that poetry 
 should be 'simple, sensuous, and passionate.' . . . Every 
 one of Spenser's senses was as exquisitely alive to the impressions 
 of material, as every organ of his soul was to those of spiritual 
 beauty. . . . We sometimes feel in reading him as if he 
 were the pure sense of the beautiful incarnated to the one end 
 that he might interpret it to our duller perceptions. So ex- 
 quisite was his sensibility that with him sensation and intellec- 
 tion seem identical, and we 'can almost say his body thought,' 
 . . . So entirely are beauty and the delight in it the native 
 element of Spenser that, whenever, in the * Faery Queene ' you 
 come suddenly on the moral, it gives you a shock of unpleas- 
 ant surprise, a kind of grit, as when one's teeth close on a bit 
 of gravel in a dish of strawberries and cream. . . . While 
 the senses of most men live in the cellar, his 'were laid in 
 
SPENSER 63 
 
 a large upper chamber which opened toward the sunrising. ' 
 Whoever can endure unmixed delight, whoever can 
 tolerate music and painting and poetry all in one, whoever 
 wishes to be rid of thought and to let the busy anvils of the 
 brain be silent for a time, let him read the ' Faery Queene.' 
 There is the land of pure heart's ease, where no ache or sorrow 
 of spirit can enter. . . . This exaltation with which love 
 sometimes subtilizes the nerves of coarsest men so that they 
 feel and see, not the thing as it seems to others, but the 
 beauty of it, the joy of it, the soul of eternal youth that is in 
 it, would appear to have been the normal condition of Spen- 
 ser." Lowell. 
 
 " Beauty, Spenser maintained, is twofold. There is a 
 beauty which is a mere pasture to the eye ; it is a spoil for 
 which we grow greedy ; and there is the higher 
 
 beauty of which the peculiar quality is a penetrating radiance; 
 it illuminates all that comes into its presence; it is a beam 
 from the divine fount of light. . . . Upon the whole, 
 the ' Faery Queene,' if nothing else, is at least a labyrinth of 
 beauty, a forest of old romance, in which it is possible to lose 
 oneself more irrecoverably amid the tangled luxury of loveli- 
 ness than elsewhere in English poetry. . . . But Spenser's 
 rare sensibility to beauty would have found itself ill content if 
 he had had mere solitude of nature, however fair, to contem- 
 plate. In his perfect joy in the presence of human beauty he 
 is thoroughly a man of the Renaissance. The visions which 
 he creates of man and woman cast a spell over their creator ; 
 he cannot withdraw his gaze from the creatures of his imagi- 
 nation ; he must satiate his senses with their loveliness; all his 
 being is thrilled with a pure ecstasy as he continues to gaze. 
 And what form of human beauty is there to which Spenser 
 does not pay a poet's homage ? But more than any 
 
 other form of beauty, that of womanhood charms Spenser, 
 renders his imagination ' empassioned,' or calms and com- 
 pletely satisfies it." Edward Dowden. 
 
64 SPENSER 
 
 1 ' Above all, his was a soul captivated by sublime and 
 chaste beauty, eminently platonic. . . . He has an ado- 
 ration for beauty worthy of Dante and Plotinus. And this 
 because he never considers it a mere harmony of color and 
 form but an emanation of unique, heavenly, imperishable 
 beauty, which no mortal eye can see, and which is the master- 
 piece of the great Author of the worlds. Bodies only render it 
 visible ; it does not live in them ; charm and attraction are 
 not in things but in the immortal idea which shines through 
 them. . . . This is the greatness of his work ; he has 
 succeeded in seizing beauty in its fulness because he cared 
 for nothing but beauty. . . . Each story is modulated 
 with respect to another and all with respect to a certain effect 
 which is being worked out. Thus a beauty issues from this 
 harmony the beauty in the poet's heart which his whole 
 soul strives to express ; a noble and yet a cheerful beauty, 
 made up of moral elevation and sensuous seductions, English 
 in sentiment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern 
 in its perfection, representing a unique and wonderful epoch, 
 the appearance of paganism in a Christian race and the wor- 
 ship of form by an imagination of the North." Taine. 
 
 " For the lover of poetry, for the reader who understands 
 and can receive the poetic charm, the revelation of beauty in 
 metrical language, no English poem is the superior, or, range 
 and variety being considered, the equal of the 'Faery Queene.' 
 . . . He is the poet of all others for those who seek in 
 poetry only poetical qualities." George Saintsbury. 
 
 " The love of beauty . . . is the moving principle of 
 his mind. ... He luxuriates equally in scenes of Eastern 
 magnificence or the still solitude of a hermit's cell, in the ex- 
 tremes of sensuality or refinement." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " He is more luxurious than Ariosto or Tasso, more haunted 
 with the presence of beauty." Leigh Hunt. 
 
SPENSER 65 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And over all of purest gold was spred 
 A trayle of y vie in his native hew ; 
 For the rich metall was so coloured 
 That wight who did not well avis'd it vew 
 Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew ; 
 Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe 
 That themselves dipping in the silver dew 
 Their fleecy flowres they fearefully did steepe, 
 Which drops of christall seemed for wantonese to weepe." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 With that I saw two swannes of goodly hewe 
 Come softly swimming downe along the Lee ; 
 Two fairer birds I yet did never see ; 
 The snow which doth the top of Pindus strew, 
 Did never whiter shew 
 
 Nor Jove himselfe, when he a swan would be 
 For love of Leda, whiter did appeare ; 
 Yet Leda was (they say) as white as he ; 
 Yet not so white as these, nor nothing neare ; 
 So purely white they were 
 
 That even the gentle streame the which them bare 
 Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare 
 To wet their silken feathers, least they might 
 Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre, 
 And marre their beauties bright, 
 That shone as heavens light, 
 Against their brydale day, which was not long : 
 Sweet Themmes ! runne softly till I end my song." 
 
 Prothalamion. 
 
 " Lastly his shinie wings as silver bright, 
 Painted with thousand colours passing farre 
 All painter's skill, he did about him dight : 
 Not halfe so manie sundrie colours arre 
 In Iris bow ; ne heaven doth shine so bright, 
 Distinguished with manie a twinckling starre ; 
 Nor Junoes bird, in her ey-spotted traine, 
 So many goodly colours doth containe." Muiopotmos. 
 5 
 
66 SPENSER 
 
 /v/5. Moral Elevation Manliness. "The moral 
 //picture presented in the ' Faery Queene ' is the ideal of noble 
 manliness in Elizabeth's time. We must admire the intrinsic 
 nobleness of Spenser's general aim, his conception of human 
 life, at once so exacting and so indulgent, his high ethical 
 principles and ideals, his unfeigned honor for all that is pure 
 and brave and unselfish and tender, his generous estimate of 
 what is due from man to man of service, affection, and fidel- 
 ity. . . . Spenser had in his nature, besides sweet- 
 ness, his full proportion of the stern and high manliness of 
 his generation ; noble and heroic ideals captivate him by 
 their attractions. He kindles naturally and genuinely at what 
 proves and draws out men's courage, their self-command, 
 their self-sacrifice. He can moralize with the best in terse 
 and deep-reaching apothegms of melancholy or even despair- 
 ing experience. . . . That character of the completed 
 man, raised above what is poor and low, and governed by 
 noble tempers and pure principles, has in Spenser two con- 
 spicuous elements. In the first place it is based on manliness. 
 . . . The manliness which is at the foundation of all 
 that is good in them [his personages illustrating the virtues] is 
 a universal quality common to them all, rooted and imbedded 
 in the governing idea or standard of moral character in the 
 poem. The substance of the ' Faery Queene ' is the poet's phi- 
 losophy of life. . . . It is the quality of soul which frankly 
 accepts the conditions in human life of labor, of obedience, of 
 effort, of unequal success, which does not quarrel with them or 
 evade them, but takes for granted with unquestioning alacrity 
 that man is called by his call to high aims and destiny to 
 a continual struggle with difficulty, with pain, with evil, and 
 makes it a point of honor not to be dismayed or wearied out 
 by them. . . . It is a cheerful and serious willingness for 
 hard work and endurance as being inevitable and very bearable 
 necessities, together with even a pleasure in encountering trials 
 which put a man on his mettle, an enjoyment of the contest 
 
SPENSER 67 
 
 and the risk, even in play. It is the quality which seizes on 
 the paramount idea of duty, as something which leaves a man 
 no choice." R. W. Church. 
 
 " We are in communion with a nature in which the most 
 delicate, the most voluptuous sense of beauty is in harmony 
 with the austerest recognition of the paramount obligations of 
 goodness and rectitude. The beauty of material objects never 
 obscures to him the beauty of holiness." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "Spenser's notions of love were so nobly pure as not to 
 disqualify him for achieving the quest of the Holy Grail. 
 . . . His rebukes of clerical worldliness are in the Pu- 
 ritan tone. . . . No man can read the ' Faery Queene ' 
 and be anything but the better for it. Through that rude age 
 when Maids of Honor drank beer for breakfast and Hamlet 
 could say a gross thing to Ophelia, he passes serenely, ab- 
 stracted and high, the Don Quixote of poets. . . . With 
 a purity like that of thrice bolted snow, he had none of its 
 coldness. " Lowell. 
 
 " We find in this [' Faery Queene,'] and subordinately in his 
 other works, a mind of uncommon exaltation and an earnest 
 love of virtue and nobleness, and we surmise a character to 
 correspond. . . . Among very great poems, the < Divina 
 Commedia ' of Dante and the ' Faery Queene ' of Spenser stand 
 alone in taking as their direct theme moral or spiritual virtue, 
 to be exhibited, enforced, and illustrated." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " The poet freely chooses what pleases his fancy in classical 
 or neo-classical mythology ; yet at heart he is almost Puritan. 
 Not, indeed, Puritan in any turning away from innocent de- 
 lights ; not Puritan in casting dishonor on our earthly life, its 
 beauty, its splendor, its joy, its passion; but Puritan as Milton 
 was when he wrote ' Lycidas,' in his weight of moral purpose, 
 in his love of a grave plainness in religion and of humble 
 laboriousness in those who are shepherds under Christ. . . . 
 To render men's feelings more sane, pure, and permanent 
 this surely was included in the great design of the ' Faery 
 
68 SPENSER 
 
 Queene ; ' it was deliberately kept before him as an object by 
 Spenser ' our sage and serious Spenser, whom I dare to name 
 a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. ' . . . The ethical 
 teaching of Spenser, extracted from his poetry, is worthy a 
 careful study. Ascetic in the best sense of that word Spenser 
 assuredly was ; he desired to strengthen every part of our 
 nature by heroic discipline and to subordinate the lower parts 
 to the higher, so that, if strong, they might be strong for ser- 
 vice, not for mastery. ... By his enthusiasm on behalf 
 of the noblest moral qualities, by his strenuous joy in the 
 presence of the noblest human creatures man and woman 
 Spenser breathes into us a breath of life which has an anti- 
 septic power, which kills the germs of disease, and is antago- 
 nistic to the relaxed fibre, the lethargy, the dissolution or dis- 
 integrating life-in-death of sensuality. Any heroism of man 
 or woman is like wine to gladden Spenser's heart ; we see 
 through the verse how it quickens the motion of his blood. 
 A swift, clear flame of sympathy, like an answering beacon lit 
 upon the high places of his soul, even though it be an imagined 
 one, summoning his own. . . . To incite and to conduct 
 men to an active virtue is not only the express purpose of the 
 * Faery Queene,' but as far as a poem can render such service, 
 the ' Faery Queene ' doubtless has actually served to train 
 knights of holiness, knights of temperance, knights of cour- 
 tesy. . . . He strove, as far as in him lay, to breed a 
 race of high-souled English gentlemen, who should have none 
 of the meanness of the libertine, none of the meanness of the 
 precisian." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " Milton himself, the severe Milton, extolled his [Spen- 
 ser's] moral teachings; his philosophical idealism is evidently 
 no mere poet's plaything or parrot's lesson, but thoroughly 
 thought out and believed in." George Saintsbury. 
 
 "It [the ' Faery Queen '] is a continual, deliberate en- 
 deavor to enlist the restless intellect and chivalrous feelings of 
 an inquiring and romantic age on the side of goodness and 
 
SPENSER 69 
 
 faith, of unity and justice. . . . Spenser, then, was 
 essentially a sacred poet; but the delicacy and insinuating 
 gentleness of his disposition were better fitted to the veiled 
 than to the direct mode of instruction." -John Keble. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " All places they [Ignorance and Barbarism] with follie have 
 possest, 
 
 And with vaine toyes the vulgare entertaine ; 
 But me have banished, with all the rest 
 
 That whilome wont to wait upon my traine, 
 Fine Counterfesaunce and unhurtfull Sport, 
 Delight, and Laughter, deckt in seemly sort. 
 
 " But that same gentle Spirit, from whose pen 
 Large streams of honnie and sweete Nectar flowe, 
 
 Scorning the boldnes of such base-born men, 
 Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, 
 
 Doth rather chose to sit in idle Cell, 
 
 Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell." 
 
 The Teares of the Muses. 
 
 " Love, lift me up upon thy golden wings, 
 
 From this base world unto thy heavens hight, 
 Where I may see those admirable things 
 
 Which there thou workest by thy soveraine might, 
 Farre above feeble reach of earthly sight, 
 That I thereof an heavenly hymne may sing 
 Unto the God of Love, high heavens king. 
 
 Many lewd layes (ah ! woe is me the more ! ) 
 In praise of that mad fit which fooles call love, 
 
 I have in th' heat of youth made heretofore, 
 That in light wits did loose affection move ; 
 But all those follies now I do reprove, 
 
 And turned have the tenor of my string, 
 
 The heavenly prayses of true love to sing." 
 
 An Hymne of Heavenly Love. 
 
7O SPENSER 
 
 " Let none then blame me, if in discipline 
 
 Of vertue and of civill uses lore, 
 I doe not forme them to the common line 
 
 Of present dayes, which are corrupted sore, 
 
 But to the antique use which was of yore, 
 When good was onely for it selfe desyred, 
 
 And all men sought their owne, and none no more ; 
 When Justice was not for most meed out-hyred, 
 But simple Truth did rayne, and was of all admyred." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 6. Reverence for Womanhood. " Spenser is the 
 creator of some of the most exquisite embodiments of female 
 excellence the man who had the high honor of saying of 
 women, 
 
 ' For demigods they be, and first did spring 
 From heaven, though graft in frailness feminine.' 
 
 That celestial light which occasionally touches his page with 
 an ineffable beauty, and which gave to him in his own time 
 the name of ' the heavenly Spenser,' is a more wonderful 
 emanation from his mind than its subtlest melodies. We es- 
 pecially feel this in his ideal delineations of woman, in which 
 he has only been exceeded by Shakespeare. . . . He 
 has been called the poet's poet; he should also be called the 
 woman's poet, for the feminine element in his genius is its 
 loftiest, deepest, most angelic element. . . . The tender- 
 ness, the ethereal softness and grace, the moral purity, the 
 sentiment untainted by sentimentality, which characterize 
 his impersonations of female excellence, show, too, that the 
 poet's brain had been fed from his heart, and that reverence 
 for woman was the instinct of his sensibility before it was con- 
 firmed by the insight of his imagination." E. P. Whipplc. 
 " He pauses, after relating a lovely instance of chastity, to 
 exhort women to modesty. He pours out the wealth of his 
 respect and tenderness at the feet of his heroines. If any 
 
SPENSER 71 
 
 coarse man insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the 
 gods. Never does he bring them on his stage without adorn- 
 ing their name with splendid eulogy." Taine. 
 
 "For Spenser, behind each woman made to worship or 
 love rises a sacred presence Womanhood itself. Her beauty 
 of face and limb is but a manifestation of the invisible beauty, 
 and this is of one kin with the Divine Wisdom and the Divine 
 Love. . . . Spenser's manner of portraiture seems to be 
 at its best in female figures. ' The perfection of woman,' said 
 Coleridge, 'is to be characterless,' meaning that no single 
 prominent quality, however excellent, can equal in beauty 
 and excellence a well-developed, harmonious nature. Spen- 
 ser loved also this harmony of character, and he found it, or 
 believed he found it, more in woman than in man." Edward 
 Dowden. 
 
 " Una is one of the noblest contributions which poetry has 
 ever made to its great picture gallery of character. . . . 
 Britomart is the loftiest of Spenser's heroines. She is not 
 woman unsexed, but woman raised above woman, and there- 
 fore woman still. . *. . The mode in which Spenser 
 associated the virtues as well as the graces with his special idea 
 of womanhood an idea very remote from that common in 
 our days is nowhere more beautifully illustrated than in 
 Book IV., canto IX., where Scudamour describes the temple 
 of Venus and the recovery of his lost Amoret." Aubrey DJ 
 Vere. 
 
 " Where else is woman, in her pure ideal, still so humanly 
 beautiful?" Professor Wilson [Cristopher North]. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But if ye saw that which no eyes can see, 
 The inward beauty of her lively spright, 
 Garnisht with heavenly guifts of high degree, 
 Much more then would ye wonder at that sight, 
 
72 SPENSER 
 
 And stand astonisht like to those which red 
 Medusaes mazeful hed. 
 
 There dwels sweet Love and constant Chastity, 
 Unspotted Fayth and comely Womanhood, 
 Regard of Honour and mild Modesty ; 
 
 There Vyrtue raynes as Queene in royal throne, 
 
 And giveth lawes alone, 
 The which the base affections doe obay, 
 
 And yeeld theyr services unto her will ; 
 Ne thought of things uncomely ever may 
 
 Thereto approch to tempt her mind to ill." 
 
 Epithalamion. 
 
 " Nought is there under heav'ns wide hollownesse, 
 
 That moves more deare compassion of mind, 
 Than beautie brought t' unworthy wretchednesse 
 
 Through envies snares or fortunes freaks unkind. 
 
 I, whether lately through her brightness blynd, 
 Or through allegeaunce and fast fealty, 
 
 Which I do owe unto all womankynd, 
 Feel my heart perst with so great agony, 
 When such I see that all for pitty I could dy." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 " But ye, faire dames ! the worlds deare ornaments 
 
 And lively images of heavens light, 
 Let not your beames with such disparagements 
 
 Be dimd and your bright glorie darkned quight ; 
 
 But, mindfull still of your first countries sight, 
 Doe still preserve your first informed grace, 
 Whose shadow yet shynes in your beauteous face. 
 
 " Loath that foule blot, that hellish fierbrand, 
 Disloiall lust, faire Beauties foulest blame, 
 That base affections, which your eares would bland, 
 Commend to you by loves abused name, 
 But is indeede the bondslave of defame ; 
 Which will the garland of your glorie marre, 
 And quench the light of your bright shyning star." 
 
 An Hymne in Honour of Beautie. 
 
SPENSER 73 
 
 Diffuseness Obscurity. " As a narrative, the 
 Faery Queene ' has, I think, every fault of which that kind of 
 writing is capable. ... He habitually dilates rather 
 than compresses. . . . The characters are vague, and, 
 even were they not, they drop out of the story so often and re- 
 main out of it so long that we have forgotten who they are 
 when we meet them again; the episodes hinder the advance 
 of the action instead of relieving it with variety of incident or 
 novelty of situation; the plot recalls drearily our ancient 
 enemy, the metrical romance. . . . The generous indefi- 
 niteness, which treats an hour more or less as of no account, is in 
 keeping with that sense of endless leisure which it is one chief 
 merit of the poem to suggest. But Spenser's dilation extends to 
 thoughts as well as to phrases and images. He does not love 
 the concise. Yet his dilation is not a mere distention, but 
 the expansion of natural growth in the rich soil of his own 
 mind, wherein the merest stick of a verse puts forth leaves and 
 blossoms. " Lowell. 
 
 " Much of the covert sense is easily detected ; but to explain 
 all would require a commentator who could not only think 
 from Spenser's mind, but recall from oblivion all the gossip of 
 Elizabeth's court. . . . The cumbrousness and confusion 
 and diffusion which the critics have recognized in the poem 
 are to be referred to the fact that the processes of the under- 
 standing, coldly contemplating the general plan, are in hope- 
 less antagonism to the processes of the imagination, rapturously 
 beholding and bodying forth the separate facts. The moment 
 the poet abandons himself to his genius he forgets, and makes 
 us forget, the purpose he had in view at the start; and he and 
 we are only recalled from the delicious dream that he may 
 moralize and that we may yawn. . . . He has auroral 
 lights in profusion but no lightning." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " The * Faery Queene ' is an heroic poem in which the hero- 
 ine, who gives her name to it, never appears: a story, of which 
 the basis and starting-point is whimsically withheld for disclos- 
 
74 SPENSER 
 
 ure in the last book, which was never written. The passion 
 of the age was for ingenious riddling in morality as in love. 
 . . . Exaggeration, profuseness, prolixity, were the literary 
 diseases of the age ; an age of great excitement and hope, 
 which had suddenly discovered its wealth and its powers, but 
 not the rules of true economy in using them. . . . There 
 was in Spenser an incontinence of the descriptive faculty. 
 There is continually haunting us, amid incontestable 
 richness, vigor, and beauty, a sense that the work is over- 
 done. . . . There is no want in him, either, of that 
 power of epigrammatic terseness which, in spite of its diffuse- 
 ness, his age valued and cultivated. But when he gets on 
 a story or scene, he never knows when to stop. His duels go 
 on, stanza after stanza, till there is no sound part left in either 
 champion. ... He drowns us in words. . . . But 
 say what we will, and a great deal may be said, of his lavish 
 profusion, his heady and uncontrolled excess, in the richness 
 of picture and allegory in which he indulges still, there it 
 lies before us, like the most gorgeous of summer gardens. 
 . . . The ' Faery Queene, ' as a whole, bears on its face a 
 great fault of construction. It carries with it no adequate ac- 
 count of its own story ; it does not explain itself or contain in 
 its own structure what would enable a reader to understand 
 how it arose. It has- to be accounted for by a prose explana- 
 tion and key outside of itself. . . . The truth is that the 
 power of ordering and connecting a long and complicated plan 
 was not one of Spenser's gifts. In the first two books, the al- 
 legorical story proceeds from point to point with fair coher- 
 ence and consecutiveness. After them the attempt to hold 
 the scheme together, except in the loosest and most general 
 way, is given up as too troublesome or too confined. The 
 poet . . . ranges unrestrained over the whole field of 
 knowledge and imagination. . . . His poem became an 
 elastic framework, into which he could fit whatever interested 
 him and tempted him to composition, , , , So multi- 
 
SPENSER 75 
 
 "arious is the poem, so full of all that he thought or observed 
 or felt that it is really a collection of separate tales and alle- 
 gories, as much as the Arabian Nights. ... As a whole 
 it is confusing, but we need not treat it as a whole. 
 We can hardly lose our way in it, for there is no way to lose. 
 . . . It is a wilderness in which we are left to wander. 
 But there may be interest and pleasure in a wilderness, if we 
 are prepared for the wandering. ... A vein of what are 
 manifestly contemporary allusions breaks across the moral 
 drift of the allegory, with an apparently distinct yet obscured 
 meaning, and one of which it is the work of dissertations to 
 find the key. ... In Spenser's allegories we are not 
 seldom at a loss to make out what and how much was really 
 intended, amid a maze of overstrained analogies and over- 
 subtle conceits and attempts to hinder a too close and danger- 
 ous identification. . . . There is an intentional dislocation 
 of the parts of the story, when they might make it imprudently 
 close in its reflection of facts or resemblance in portraiture. 
 His palaces, landscapes, pageants, feasts, are taken 
 to pieces in all their parts, and all these parts are likened to 
 some other things. The impression remains that he wants a 
 due perception of the absurd, the unnatural, the unneces- 
 sary." R. W. Church. 
 
 " Like Homer, Spenser is redundant, ingenuous, even 
 childish. He says everything, he puts down reflections which 
 we have made beforehand ; he repeats without limit his grand 
 ornamental epithets. . . . We can see that he beholds 
 objects in a beautiful uniform light, with infinite detail, never 
 fearing to see his happy dream change or disappear. 
 His thought expands in vast repeated comparisons, like those 
 of the old Ionic poet. ... He develops all the ideas 
 which he handles. All his phrases become periods. Instead 
 of compressing, he expands." Tame. 
 
 " One unpardonable fault, the fault of tediousness, pervades 
 the whole of the ' Faery Queene. ' We become sick of cardinal 
 
76 SPENSER 
 
 virtues and deadly sins, and long for the society of plain men 
 and women." Macaulay. 
 
 " Dryden and many others have complained of intricacy 
 and incoherence in the ' Faery Queene.' The admirers of the 
 poet should not meet this complaint with a denial of the fact ; 
 for a fact it is that Spenser does often violate the plain laws of 
 space and time. To maintain coherence prolonged actions 
 must sometimes be supposed to happen in no time ; and per- 
 sonages are sometimes present or absent as it suits the poet's 
 convenience, coming and going without remark. The proper 
 excuse is to say the scene is laid ' in the delightful land of 
 Faery,' where perplexity and confusion are as natural as in a 
 dream. The real explanation probably is, that the poet wrote 
 with great facility, and that in < winging his flight rapidly 
 through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds,' he some- 
 times sang himself to sleep, and forgot exactly where he was. 
 'In description,' Campbell says, 'Spenser exhibits 
 nothing of the brief strokes and robust power which char- 
 acterize the very greatest poets. ' It would perhaps be more 
 accurate to say that the brief strokes are supplemented and 
 their abrupt, concentrated effect weakened, or at least soft- 
 ened, by subsequent diffusion. . . . The poet does not 
 leave his conceptions pent up and struggling with repressed 
 force, but expands them into sublime images." William 
 Minto. 
 
 "But now the mystic tale, that pleased of yore, 
 Can charm an understanding age no more ; 
 The long-spun allegories fulsome grow, 
 While the dull moral lies too plain below." 
 
 Addison. 
 
 "This poet contains great beauties, a sweet and harmonious 
 versification, easy elocution, a fine imagination. Yet does the 
 perusal of his work become so tedious that one never finishes 
 k from the mere pleasure that it affords. It soon becomes a 
 kind of task-reading, and it requires some effort and resolution 
 
SPENSER 77 
 
 to carry us on to the end of his long performance. Spenser 
 keeps his place upon our shelves, among the classics, but is 
 seldom seen on the table, and there is scarcely an one, if he 
 dare to be ingenuous, but will confess that, notwithstanding all 
 the merit of the poet, he affords an entertainment with which 
 the palate is soon satiated." Hume. 
 
 " Superfluousness, though eschewed with a fine instinct by 
 Chaucer in some of his latest works, where the narrative was 
 fullest of action and character, abounded in his others ; and, 
 in spite of the classics, it had not been recognized as a fault in 
 Spenser's time, when books were still rare and a writer thought 
 himself bound to pour out all he felt and knew. It accorded 
 also with his genius, and in him it is not an excess of weakness 
 but of will and luxury." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Like as the tide, that comes fro* the ocean mayne, 
 Flowes up the Shenan with contrarie forse, 
 And, over-ruling him in his owne rayne, 
 Drives backe the current of his kindly course, 
 And makes it seeme to have some other sourse ; 
 But when the floud is spent, then backe againe 
 His borrowed waters forst to redisbourse, 
 He sends the sea his owne with double gaine, 
 And tribute eke withall as to his soveraine, 
 Thus did the battell varie to and fro." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 "Whom when the Prince to batteil new addrest 
 And threatning high his dreadfull stroke did see, 
 His sparkling blade about his head he blest, 
 And smote off quite his right leg by the knee, 
 That down he tombled ; as an aged tree, 
 High growing on the top of rocky clift, 
 Whose hartstrings with keene steel nigh hewen be ; 
 The mightie trunck, halfe rent with ragged rift, 
 Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drift. 
 
78 SPENSER 
 
 Or as a Castle reared high and round, 
 
 By subtile engins and malitious slight 
 
 Is undermined from the lowest ground, 
 
 And her foundation forst, and feebled quight, 
 
 At last dovvne falles : and with her heaped hight 
 
 Her hastie ruin does more heavie make, 
 
 And yields it selfe unto the victours might. 
 
 Such was the Gyaunts fall, that seemed to shake 
 
 The stedfast globe of earth, as it for feare did quake." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 "But if I her like ought on earth might read, 
 I would her lyken to a crowne of lillies, 
 Upon a virgin brydes adorned head, 
 With roses dight and goolds and daffadillies ; 
 Or like the circlet of a turtle true, 
 In which all colours of the rainbow bee ; 
 Or like faire Phebes garlond shining new, 
 In which all pure perfection one may see. 
 But vaine it is to thinke, by paragone 
 Of earthly things, to judge of things divine ; 
 Her power, her mercy, her wisdome, none 
 Can deeme, but who the Godhead can define." 
 
 Colin Clout's Come Home Again. 
 
 8. Verbal License. Spenser has been generally criti- 
 cised for the liberties that he takes with language. Craik de- 
 clares that his treatment of words on the occasion of difficulty 
 with his verse is " like nothing that was ever seen unless it might 
 be Hercules breaking the back of the Nemean lion. He gives 
 them any sense and any shape that the case may demand. 
 Sometimes he merely alters a letter or two ; sometimes he twists 
 off the head or tail of the unfortunate vocable altogether." 
 Ben Jonson declared that, in " affecting the ancients," Spenser 
 " writ no language," and Daniel, writing soon after his mas- 
 ter, criticises him for singing "in aged accents and untimely 
 words." 
 
 "He professes to make language and style suitable to the 
 
SPENSER 79 
 
 ' ragged and rustical ' rudeness of the shepherds whom he brings 
 on the scene, by making it both archaic and provincial. He 
 found in Chaucer a store of forms and words sufficiently well 
 known to be, with a little help, intelligible and sufficiently 
 out of common use to give the character of antiquity to a 
 poetry which employed them. And from his sojourn in the 
 North he is said to have imported a certain number of local 
 peculiarities which would seem unfamiliar and harsh in the 
 South. . . . The liberty of reviving old forms, of vent- 
 uring on new and bold phrases, was rightly greater in his 
 time than at a later stage of the language. Many of his words, 
 either invented or preserved, are happy additions ; some, 
 which have not taken root in the language, we may regret. 
 But it was a liberty which he abused. He was extravagant 
 and unrestrained in his experiments on language. . . . 
 On his own authority he cuts down, or he alters a word, or 
 he adopts a mere corrupt pronunciation to suit a place in his 
 metre or because he wants a rime. . . . Precedents 
 may no doubt be found for each one of these sacri- 
 fices to the necessities of metre or rime in some one or other 
 living dialectic usage or even in printed books. 
 But when they are profusely used, as they are in Spenser, they 
 argue either want of trouble or want of resource. In his im- 
 patience he is reckless in making a word he wants ; he is 
 reckless in making one word do the duty of another, inter- 
 changing actives and passives, transferring epithets from their 
 proper subjects. . . . His own generation felt his license 
 to be extreme, . . . and to us, though students of the 
 language must always find interest in the storehouse of ancient 
 or invented language to be found in Spenser, this mixture of 
 what is obsolete or capriciously new is a bar, and not an un- 
 reasonable one, to a frank welcome at first acquaintance." 
 R. W. Church. 
 
 "Avoiding the affectation of refinement [in the ' Shep- 
 heard's Calendar '] he falls into the opposite affectation of rustic- 
 
80 SPENSER 
 
 ity ; and, by a profusion of obsolete and uncouth expressions, 
 hinders the free movement of his fancy." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "He loved 'seldseen, costly' words perhaps too well, and 
 did not always distinguish between mere strangeness and that 
 novelty which is so agreeable as to cheat us with some charm 
 of seeming association. He chooses his language for its rich 
 canorousness rather than for intensity of meaning. 
 He forms English words out of French or Italian ones, some- 
 times, I think, on a misapprehension of their true meaning ; 
 nay, he sometimes makes new ones by unlawfully grafting a 
 scion of Romance on a Teutonic root. . . . His archa- 
 isms often needed a glossary even in his own day, but he 
 never endangers his finest passages by any experiments of this 
 kind. . . . Spenser was an epicure in language. 
 His innovations were by no means always happy, as not always 
 according with the genius of the language, and they have 
 therefore not prevailed. . . . His theory ... of 
 rescuing good archaisms from unwarranted oblivion was ex- 
 cellent, not so his practice of being archaic for the mere sake 
 of escaping from the common and familiar. ... It may 
 readily be granted that he sometimes 'hunted the letter,' as 
 it was called, out of all cry." Lowell. 
 
 "A great deal has been written on this comments, at 
 least, of the unfavorable kind, generally resolving themselves 
 into the undoubtedly true remarks that Spenser's dialect is 
 not the dialect of any actual place or time, that it is an arti- 
 ficial ' poetic diction ' made up of Chaucer and of Northern 
 dialect, of classicisms and of foreign words and miscellaneous 
 archaisms from no matter where. No doubt it is. But 
 . . . there was no actually spoken or ordinarily written 
 tongue in Spenser's day which could claim to be ' Queen's 
 English.' ... In its remoteness without grotesqueness, 
 in its lavish color, in its abundance of matter for every kind 
 of cadence and sound-effect, it is exactly suited to the sub- 
 ject, the writer, and the verse." George Saintsbury. 
 
SPENSER 8 1 
 
 " He was probably seduced into a certain license of ex- 
 pression by the difficulty of filling up the moulds of his com- 
 plicated rhymed stanza from the limited resources of his na- 
 tive language. . . . Spenser is the poet of our waking 
 dreams ; and he has invented a language of his own for 
 them." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Intentionally archaic in his diction, he heightened the 
 stature of English as a poetic language, and raised it to a 
 pitch of exaltation which had not previously been approached, 
 and has hardly since been rivalled by the few noblest among 
 his successors." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 11 He is enamoured of it [the poetic land] even to its very 
 language; he revives the old words, the expressions of the Mid- 
 dle Ages, the style of Chaucer." Taine. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 HOBBINOL. " Diggon Davie ! I bidde her god day ; 
 Or Diggon her is, or I missaye." 
 
 DlGGON. " Her was her, while it was daye-light, 
 
 But now her is a most wretched wight ; 
 
 For day that was, is wightly * past, 
 
 And now at earst the dirke night doth hast." 
 
 HOBBINOL. " Diggon, areecie, who has thee so dight? 
 Never I wist thee in so poore a plight. 
 Where is the fayre flock thou was wont to leade ? 
 Or bene they chaffred,f or a mischiefe dead ? " 
 
 DlGGON." Hobbin, ah Hobbin ! I curse the stounde 
 
 That ever I cast to have lorne this grounde : 
 
 Wel-away the while I was so fonde J 
 
 To leave the good that I had in hande, 
 
 In hope of better that was uncouth ! 
 
 So lost the Dogge the flesh in his mouth. 
 
 * Quickly. t Sold. J Foolish. 
 
 6 
 
82 SPENSER 
 
 My seely sheepe (ah, seely sheepe !) 
 That here by there I whilome used to keepe, 
 All were they lustye, as thou didst see, 
 Bene all sterved with pyne and penuree ; 
 Hardly my selfe escaped thilke payne, 
 Driven for neede to come home agayne.'* 
 The Shtpheards 
 
 *' The soveraine weede betwixt two marbles playne* 
 She pounded small, and did in pieces bruise ; 
 
 And theft atween her lily handes twain 
 
 Into his wound the juice thereof did scruze. , , 
 
 And after having searched the intuse deep, 
 
 She with her scarf did bind the wound, from cold to keepe." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 " Ensample of his wondrous faculty, 
 
 Behold the boyling bathes in Cairbadon, 
 Which seeth with secret fire eternally, 
 
 And in their entrailles, full of quick brimston, 
 Nourish the flames which they are warmed upon." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 9. Flattery Adulation. " His disposition was soft 
 and yielding; and, to honor a friend or propitiate a patron, 
 he did not hesitate to make his verse a vehicle of flattery as 
 well as of truth. . . . The flattery of Queen Elizabeth is 
 so gross that' the wonder is she did not behead him for irony 
 instead of pensioning him for panegyric. The Queen's hair 
 was red ; and Spenser, like the other poets of his day, is too 
 loyal to permit the ideal head of beauty to wear any locks 
 but those which are golden." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "He had already too well caught the trick of flattery 
 flattery in a degree almost inconceivable to us which the 
 fashions of the time and the queen's strange self-deceit exacted 
 from the loyalty and enthusiasm of Englishmen. . . . 
 Under this head comes a feature which the ' charity of his- 
 tory ' may lead us to treat as simple exaggeration, but which 
 
SPENSER 83 
 
 often suggests something less pardonable, in the great char- 
 acters, political or literary, of Elizabeth's reign. This was 
 the gross, shameless, lying flattery paid to the Queen. . . . 
 It was no worship of a secluded and distant object of loyalty ; 
 the men who thus flattered knew perfectly well, often by 
 painful experience, what Elizabeth was ; able, indeed, high- 
 spirited, successful, but ungrateful to her servants, capricious, 
 vain, ill-tempered, unjust, and in her old age ugly. And 
 yet the Gloriana of the * Faery Queene,' the empress of all 
 nobleness Belphcebe, the Princess of all sweetness and beauty, 
 Britomart, the armed votaress of all purity, Mercilla, the lady 
 of all compassion and grace, were but the reflections of the 
 language in which it was then agreed upon by some of the 
 greatest of Englishmen to speak, and to be supposed to think, 
 of the Queen. "-R. IV. Church. 
 
 " Thus [by the stipend bestowed on him by the Queen] he 
 procured the leisure to exercise his pen ' the vacant head 
 which verse demands ' but he incurred at the same time the 
 obligations of a court poet, which, though they may have sat 
 lightly on the shoulders of a loyal subject and an humble 
 off-shoot of the aristocracy, by nature prone to admiration, 
 led him sometimes into servile compliances and into a habit 
 of adulation. . . . And, speaking more generally, we 
 do not love to see our ' sage, serious Spenser ' turn his great 
 moral song into a venal eulogy of the great, committing, as it 
 were, the ineffectual simony of selling riches in the Temple of 
 Fame. But . . . flattery was a custom and almost a 
 necessity among poets." Professor Child. 
 
 " The age of Elizabeth was, indeed, ' an age of adulation' 
 and Edmund Spenser Adulator-general to the Court. But 
 blame him not too severely, we implore you, for following 
 the 'custom of the time.' " Professor Wilson [Christopher 
 North]. 
 
84 SPENSER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And thou, O fayrest Princesse under sky ! 
 
 In this fayre mirrhour maist behold thy face, 
 
 And thine own realmes in lond of Faery, 
 
 And in this antique ymage thy great auncestry. 
 
 The which, O ! pardon me thus to enfold 
 In cover vele, and wrap in shadowes light, 
 
 That feeble eyes your glory may behold, 
 
 Which ells could not endure those beames bright, 
 But would bee dazled with exceeding light." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 " The soverayne beauty which I doo admyre, 
 
 Witnesse the world how worthy to be prayzed ! 
 The light whereof hath kindled heavenly fyre 
 
 In my fraile spirit, by her from basenesse raysed ; 
 
 That, being now with her huge brightnesse dazed, 
 Base thing I can no more endure to view : 
 
 But, looking still on her I stand amazed 
 At wondrous sight of so celestiall hew. 
 
 So, when my toung would speak her praises dew, 
 It stopped is with thoughts astonishment ; 
 
 And, when my pen would write her titles true, 
 It ravisht is with fancies wonderment ; 
 
 Yet in my hart I then both speake and write 
 
 The wonder that my wit cannot endite." 
 
 Amoretti, or Sonnets. 
 
 " In the highest place, 
 Urania [Countess of Pembroke], sister unto Astrofell, 
 
 In whose brave mynd, as in a golden cofer, 
 
 All heavenly gifts and riches locked are ; 
 
 More rich than pearles of Ynd, or gold of Opher, 
 
 And in her sex more wonderfull and rare. 
 Ne lesse praise worthie I Theana [Countess of Warwick] read, 
 
 Whose goodly beames though they be overr-dight 
 With mourning stole of carefull wydowhead, 
 
 Yet through that darksome vale do glister bright ; 
 
SPENSER 85 
 
 She is the well of bountie and brave mynd, 
 Excelling most in glorie and great light : 
 
 She is the ornament of womankind, 
 
 And courts chief garlond with all vertues dight." 
 
 Colin Clout's Come Home Againe. 
 
 10. Pictorial Power. " Nothing else [than the Spen- 
 serian stanza] could adapt itself so perfectly to the endless 
 series of vignettes and dissolving views which the poet delights 
 in giving. . . . The endless, various, brightly-colored, 
 softly and yet distinctly outlined pictures rise and pass before 
 the eyes and vanish without a break, without a jar, softer than 
 sleep and as continuous, gayer than the rainbow and as un- 
 discoverably connected with any obvious cause." George 
 Saintsbury. 
 
 "It was this wondrous and various troop of ideal shapes, 
 palpable to his own eye and domesticated in his own heart, 
 that he sent forth, in an endless succession of pictures, through 
 the magical pages of the ' Faery Queene.' " E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "He so bordered it [the 'Faery Queene'] with bright- 
 colored fancies, he so often filled whole pages and crowded 
 the text hard in others with the gay frolics of his pencil, 
 that, as in the Grimani missal, the holy function of the book 
 is forgotten in the ecstasy of its adornment. . . . The 
 true use of him is as a gallery of pictures which we visit as the 
 mood takes us, and where we spend an hour or two at a time, 
 long enough to sweeten our perceptions, not so long as to 
 clog them." Lowell. 
 
 " We shall nowhere find more airy and expansive images of 
 visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer flush 
 in the colors of language than in this Rubens of English 
 poetry . " Thomas Campbell. 
 
 "Is it possible to refuse credence to a man who paints 
 things for us with such accurate details and in such lovely 
 colors? Here with a dash of his pen he describes a forest for 
 you; and are you not instantly in it with him? Beech trees 
 
86 SPENSER 
 
 with their silvery stems ; ' loftie trees iclad with sommer's 
 pride, did spred so broad that heaven's light did hide;' rays 
 of light tremble on the bark and shine on the ground, on. 
 the reddening ferns and low bushes, which, suddenly smitten 
 with the luminous track, glisten and glimmer. Footsteps are 
 scarcely heard on the thick beds of heaped leaves ; and at dis- 
 tant intervals, on the tall herbage, drops of dew are sparkling. 
 . . . At every bend in the alley, at every change of light, 
 a stanza, a word reveals a landscape or an apparition. It is 
 morning, the white dawn gleams faintly through the trees ; 
 bluish vapors veil the horizon, and vanish in the smiling air ; 
 the springs tremble and murmur faintly amongst the mosses, 
 and on high the poplar leaves begin to stir and flutter like 
 the wings of butterflies. ... In every book we see 
 strange processions pass by, allegorical and picturesque shows, 
 like those which were then displayed at the courts of princes ; 
 now a masquerade of Cupid, now of the Rivers, now of the 
 Months, now of the Vices. . . . Here are finished pict- 
 ures, true and complete, composed with a painter's feeling, 
 with choice of tints and outlines ; our eyes are delighted by 
 them. . . . The poet, here and throughout, is a colorist 
 and an architect." Taine. 
 
 "I think that if Spenser had not been a great poet he 
 would have been a great painter, and in that case there is 
 ground for believing that England would, have possessed 
 and in the person of one man her Claude, her Annibal 
 Caracci, her Correggio, her Titian, her Rembrandt, perhaps 
 even her Raphael. I suspect that if Spenser's history were 
 better known we should find that he was a passionate student 
 of pictures, a haunter of the collections of his friends, Essex 
 and Leicester. . . . Spenser emulated the Raphaels and 
 Titians in a profusion of pictures, many of which are here 
 taken from their walls. They give the poet's poet a claim to 
 a new title that of Poet of the Painters." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 "In reading his descriptions, one can hardly avoid being 
 
SPENSER 87 
 
 reminded of Rubens' allegorical pictures. . . . Nobody 
 but Rubens could have painted the fancy of Spenser ; and he 
 could not have given the sentiment, the airy dream that 
 hovers over it." William Hazlitt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A little lowly hermitage it was, 
 
 Downe in a dale, hard by a forests side, 
 Far from resort of people that did pas 
 
 In traveill to and froe ; a little wyde 
 
 There was an holy chappell edifyde, 
 Wherein the hermite dewly wont to say 
 
 His holy thinges each morne and eventyde 
 Thereby a christall streame did gently play, 
 Which from a sacred fountaine welled forth alway." 
 
 The Faery Queene. 
 
 * ' Soone after this I saw on th' other side, 
 
 A curious Coffer made of Heben wood, 
 That in it did most precious treasure hide, 
 
 Exceeding all this baser worldes good : 
 Yet through the overflowing of the flood 
 
 It almost drowned was, and done to nought, 
 
 That sight thereof much griev'd my pensive thought. 
 
 At length, when most in perill it was brought, 
 Two Angels, downe descending with swift flight, 
 
 Out of the swelling streame it lightly caught, 
 And twixt their blessed armes it carried quight 
 Above the reach of anie living sight : 
 
 So now it is transform'd into that starre, 
 
 In which all heavenly treasures locked are." 
 
 The Ruines of Time. 
 
 " Here also playing on the grassy greene, 
 
 Woodgods and Satyres and swift Dryades, 
 With many fairies oft were dauncing scene. 
 Not so much did Dan Orpheus represse 
 
88 SPENSER 
 
 The streames of Hebrus with his songs, I weene, 
 
 As that faire troupe of woodie goddesses 
 Staied thee, (O Peneus ! ) powring foorth to thee, 
 From cheereful lookes great mirth and gladsome glee. 
 
 The verie nature of the place, resounding 
 With gentle murmure of the breathing ayre, 
 
 A pleasant bowre with all delight abounding 
 In the fresh shadowe did for them prepayre, 
 
 To rest their limbs with wearines redounding. 
 
 For first the high palme trees with braunches faire 
 
 Out of the lowly vallies did arise, 
 
 And shoote up their heads into the skyes." 
 
 Virgils Gnat. 
 
MILTON, 1608-1674. 
 
 Biographical Outline. John Milton, born December 
 9, 1608, in Bread Street, Cheapside, London; father a scriv- 
 ener a man of scholarly and musical attainments; Milton is 
 first taught by a private tutor, one Thomas Young ; he enters 
 St. Paul's School not later than 1620 ; is passionately devoted 
 to study, reading till midnight regularly, while yet a child, 
 and thus early injuring his eyesight ; he learns Latin, Greek, 
 French, Italian, and some Hebrew ; is a poet at ten, and is de- 
 voted to Spenser's " Faery Queene; " he writes two paraphrases 
 of the Psalms before he is fifteen ; enters Christ's College, 
 Cambridge, February 12, 1624-25, as a pensioner, and is 
 matriculated on the pth of the following April ; he keeps every 
 term at Cambridge, taking the degree of A.B. in March, 1629, 
 and A.M. in July, 1632 ; he is harshly treated (tradition says 
 whipped) by his tutor, one Chappel ; is highly respected at 
 the university for his scholarship ; corresponds in Latin with 
 his friends Diodati, Young, and Gill, while at Cambridge ; 
 writes several Latin poems and " Prolusiones Oratories " (pub- 
 lished in 1674) as college exercises; writes his ode "On the 
 Morning of Christ's Nativity" at Christmas, 1629, and his 
 sonnet to Shakespeare in 1630 ; expresses scorn for the dra- 
 matic performances seen at Cambridge, the narrow theological 
 studies of his fellows, and their ignorance of philosophy; is 
 nicknamed " the lady " at college because of his long, flowing 
 locks, his personal beauty, and his sensitiveness ; becomes a 
 good fencer, but holds himself austerely aloof from most 
 student society ; develops great hostility to scholasticism. 
 
 Even while at Cambridge Milton already considered himself 
 as dedicated to the utterance of great thoughts and to the 
 
 89 
 
90 MILTON 
 
 strictest chastity, on the ground that "he who would write 
 well hereafter in laudable things ought himself to be a true 
 poem;" Milton is educated with a view to taking holy 
 orders, but, on leaving Cambridge, he decides to postpone 
 (but not to abandon) that course ; he is alienated from the 
 Church by the intolerant policy of Laud ; he soon decides to 
 devote himself exclusively to literature, and settles with his 
 father at Horton, in Buckinghamshire, twelve miles from 
 London, where he resides from 1632 to 1638; while at Hor- 
 ton, Milton visits London frequently, to obtain instruction in 
 music and mathematics, and writes his " L 1 Allegro " and 
 ' ' // Penseroso ; " he writes also his masque ' ' Arcades, ' ' for the 
 Countess-dowager of Derby, and " Comus " for the Earl of 
 Bridgewater (performed at Ludlow Castle in September, 1634, 
 and published by Milton's musical collaborator, Henry Lawes, 
 without acknowledging Milton's authorship) ; Milton writes 
 " Lycidas " in November, 1637, on the death of his friend 
 Edward King. 
 
 He starts in April, 1638, on a Continental tour, taking a 
 servant and being liberally supplied with money by his father; 
 he makes brief visits to Paris, Nice, Genoa, Leghorn, and Pisa, 
 and spends two months in Florence and two more in Rome ; 
 thence to Naples, where he learns of the threatened revolution, 
 and determines to return home, "lest I should be travelling 
 abroad while my countrymen were fighting for liberty; " he 
 stops two more months at Florence on his way homeward, and 
 returns by way of Ferrara, Bologna, Venice, Verona, Milan, 
 and (probably) the Simplon ; he spends some time in Geneva, 
 and reaches England via Paris in July, 1639; while abroad 
 he offends the Italians by his strict morality and his outspoken 
 attacks on popery, but is received and honored by many emi- 
 nent persons, including Grotius, the Academicians of Florence, 
 Galileo, and others; during his tour he writes five Italian 
 sonnets and a canzone ; on his return he takes lodgings in a 
 tailor's house in St. Pride's Churchyard, Londpn, and receives 
 

 MILTON 91 
 
 there his sister's two sons (aged eight and nine) as pupils; 
 soon afterward he takes " a pretty garden-house" in Alders- 
 gate Street ; he establishes for himself and his pupils a regime 
 of "hard study and spare diet," allowing himself but one 
 " gaudy day " a month, and carrying out, with his pupils, the 
 methods of education described in his tractate on that subject; 
 in 1643 he takes more pupils, and writes his Latin idyll " Epi- 
 taphium Damonis; " he sketches the plan of a poem on Arthur, 
 draws up a list of ninety-nine subjects for other poems, and 
 already contemplates a poem on " Paradise Lost ; " he enters 
 political discussion by publishing, anonymously, in the sum- 
 mer of 1641, three pamphlets " Of Reformation Touching 
 Church Discipline in England," " Prelatical Episcopacy," 
 and "Animadversions upon the Remonstrance Defence," all 
 three being vehement attacks on the episcopacy and scathing 
 replies to the pleas of its adherents. 
 
 In February, 1641-42, Milton publishes under his own 
 name "The Reason of Church Government Urged Against 
 Prelacy; " in April, 1642, he publishes his "Apology," de- 
 fending himself against a slanderous attack by Bishop Hall and 
 replying most vehemently in kind ; he declines to enter the 
 army at the outbreak of the civil war in 1642, on the ground 
 that his mind is stronger than his body, and is therefore more 
 useful to the cause of liberty; on May 21, 1643, after a sur- 
 prisingly short courtship, Milton marries Mary Powell, aged 
 seventeen, daughter of a Cavalier landholder, residing at 
 Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, who had long owed Milton a debt of 
 ^312 ; soon afterward, Milton's father, driven by the Royal- 
 ists from his home at Reading, comes to live with Milton ; 
 Milton's wife soon becomes dissatisfied with the dulness of his 
 home and the crying of his oft-beaten pupils, and Milton 
 finds his wife stupid ; so she returns to her father after a 
 month's trial of " a philosophical life," promising to return 
 at the ensuing Michaelmas ; she refuses to return ; Milton's 
 messenger is uncivilly treated by her family, and then (within 
 
92 MILTON 
 
 three months of his marriage) Milton writes his tractate on 
 "The Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce," in which he 
 justifies divorce on the ground of incompatibility or of mutual 
 consent, especially if there be no children, and proposes 
 sweeping changes in the marriagelaws ; the tractate makes 
 him notorious, and he is bitterly attacked, especially after his 
 second and acknowledged edition of the tractate in February, 
 1643-44 ; he publishes a second pamphlet on divorce in July, 
 1644 ; influenced by the demand that his books be burned 
 and by the threat of prosecution because he had not obtained 
 a proper license from the Stationers' Company, Milton writes 
 his " Areopagitica" published November 24, 1644, and gen- 
 erally acknowledged to be the best of his prose works; he pub- 
 lishes two more pamphlets on divorce in 1644-45, an( ^ P ro ~ 
 poses to apply his principles by marrying the daughter of one 
 Dr. Davis, a lady immortalized in Milton's sonnet to "Lady 
 Margaret ; " meantime his wife's parents lose their property, 
 and she begs his pardon and asks to be received again ; Milton 
 reluctantly consents, and they take a house in the Barbican 
 (a street near Aldersgate Street) large enough to accommodate 
 his increasing number of pupils ; by Mary Powell, Milton has 
 four children: Anne, Mary, John (who died in infancy), and 
 Deborah; Mrs. Milton died in 1652. 
 
 Milton publishes the first collected edition of his poems in 
 1645, placing the Latin and the English verses on separate 
 pages ; his pupils increase in number, and include several sons 
 of prominent families; in the autumn of 1647 Milton removes 
 to a house in High Holborn and gives up teaching; it is sup- 
 posed that he inherited a competency from his father, who 
 died in March, 1646-47; in his sonnet to Fairfax and in 
 other writings he expresses deep sympathy with the Puritan 
 cause ; he writes paraphrases of seventeen of the Psalms and a 
 "History of Britain;" immediately after the execution of 
 Charles I., he publishes a pamphlet on " The Tenure of Kings 
 and Magistrates," and is consequently invited to become Latin 
 
MILTON 93 
 
 Secretary to the Council of State ; he accepts, and takes office 
 March 15, 1648-49, at a salary of about ^730 a year; his 
 duties are to translate the foreign despatches of the govern- 
 ment into dignified Latin, to examine papers found on sus- 
 pected persons, and to act as a licenser of books; he is directed 
 by the government to answer the " Eikon Basilike" a book 
 then popularly supposed to have been written by Charles I., in 
 defence of his character and position, but really written by the 
 Bishop of Exeter ; Milton publishes his answer October 6, 
 1649, under the title ' ' Eikonoklastes, " of which a French 
 translation is ordered made by the Council of State ; Milton 
 is ordered by the Council, in January, 1650, to reply to Sal- 
 masius, a professor at Leyden " a man of enormous reading 
 and no judgment" whom the Scottish Presbyterians had 
 invited to write in defence of their theological and politi- 
 cal position, and who had accordingly published, in 1649, the 
 " Defensio Regio pro Carolo //" Milton's reply, "ProPopulo 
 Anglicano Defensio " appears in March, 1650, and he refuses 
 ;ioo voted him by the Council as payment for the work; 
 he completes the destruction of his eyesight by overwork on his 
 " Defence ; " in March, 1652; he is attacked with gross per- 
 sonal abuse by one Peter du Moulin in a book entitled "Regii 
 Sanguinis Clamor ad Ccelum" dedicated to Alexander More, 
 formerly professor of Greek at Geneva, and attributed to More 
 by Milton ; he is ordered by the Council to reply to the 
 " Clamor,'" and publishes his answer in May, 1654, under the 
 title t( Defensio Secunda," a book full of savage abuse, but 
 containing, also, valuable autobiographical passages and an 
 apostrophe to Cromwell ; More replies, denying the author- 
 ship of the " Clamor," and Milton writes a third book, " Pro 
 Se Defensio," in August, 1655. 
 
 While Latin secretary he occupies for a time chambers at 
 Whitehall; later he removes to another ''pretty garden-house," 
 afterward 19 York Street, subsequently occupied successively 
 by Bentham, James Mill, and Hazlitt, and demolished in 
 
94 MILTON 
 
 1877 ; he lives here till the Restoration ; he is assisted in his 
 duties as secretary by Andrew Marvell and others; in 1655, 
 apparently because of his blindness, Milton's salary is reduced 
 to ^150 a year, which was to be paid during his life, and was 
 soon increased to ^200; on November 12, 1656, he marries 
 Catherine Woodcock, by whom he has one child, but mother 
 and child die in February, 1658 ; Milton is said to have had an 
 allowance first from Parliament and afterward from Cromwell 
 for the maintenance of a ''weekly table" for the entertain- 
 ment of eminent foreigners who came to England especially 
 to see him; in 1659 he publishes two pamphlets favoring 
 a purely voluntary ecclesiastical system, and in 1660 one 
 proposing that Parliament make itself perpetual; in April, 
 1660, he writes " Brief Notes," attacking a royalist sermon ; 
 at the Restoration Milton conceals himself in a friend's house 
 in Bartholomew Close; on June 16, 1660, it is ordered by 
 the Commons that his "Pro Populo Anglicano Defensio" be 
 burned by the common hangman and that he be indicted and 
 taken into custody ; he is arrested during the summer, but is 
 ordered released at the next session on the payment of fees 
 amounting to ^150; the Indemnity Act frees him from all 
 legal consequences of his actions; the lenient treatment of 
 Milton was probably due to the efforts of his friends Marvell 
 and D'Avenant, for the latter of whom he had formerly en- 
 treated when D'Avenant was in danger of execution; on re- 
 gaining his liberty, Milton takes a house in Holborn, and soon 
 afterward removes to Jewett Street. 
 
 By the changes attendant on the Restoration his income is 
 reduced from ^500 to about ^200 a year ; Mrs. Powell, 
 mother of Milton's first wife, attempts to obtain some of his 
 property, and apparently succeeds in part; on February 24, 
 1662-63, he marries Elizabeth Minshull, and soon afterward 
 removes to a small house with a garden, in Artillery Walk, 
 Bunhill Fields, where he resides till death, if we except a re- 
 ported short sojourn as a lodger in the house of the bookseller 
 
MILTOtf 95 
 
 Millington ; during the plague of 1665 he retires to Chalfont 
 St. Giles, where " a pretty box " was taken for him by the 
 Quaker, Thomas Ellwood ; Ell wood had previously formed a 
 friendship with Milton, had read Latin books to him, received 
 from him in the " box " at Chalfont the manuscript of 
 "Paradise Lost," and suggested a poem on "Paradise Re- 
 gained ; " the house at Chalfont is still preserved (1898) as a 
 public memorial of Milton; he begins "Paradise Lost" in 
 1658 and finishes it in 1663 ; he loses his house in Bread Street 
 (inherited from his father) in the great fire of 1666; on April 
 27, 1667, Milton sells the copyright of "Paradise Lost" to 
 Samuel Simmons, the terms being that Milton is to receive 
 ^5 down and ^5 additional for each of the first three editions 
 of not more than 1,500 copies each; he receives his second 
 ^5 in April, 1669, and these 10 are all he ever received 
 personally for "Paradise Lost;" in 1680 Milton's widow 
 sells to Simmons a perpetual copyright of the book for ^8 ; 
 4,500 copies were sold by 1688 ; Dryden first appreciated its 
 value, saying of Milton : " This man cuts us all out, and the 
 ancients, too ; " with Milton's permission, Dryden puts " Para- 
 dise Lost " into a drama in rhyme, under the title "A Heroick 
 Opera," published in 1674; Milton is much visited, in his 
 later years, by foreigners and men of rank ; " Paradise Lost " 
 is translated into German and into Latin in 1682; Milton 
 publishes " Paradise Regained " and " Samson Agonistes " to- 
 gether in 1671. and could never bear to hear " Paradise Re- 
 gained " pronounced inferior to his first epic; in 1669 he 
 publishes his Latin grammar and his "History of Britain," 
 written long before ; in 1673 he puts forth a new edition of his 
 early poems ; he suffers during his last years from the gout and 
 from unpleasant domestic relations ; he dies at his house in 
 Artillery Walk, Bunhill Fields, November 8, 1674, leaving 
 i oo each to his " undutiful children," and ^600 to his 
 widow. 
 
96 MILTON 
 
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MILTON 97 
 
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 son, 194-211. 
 
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 65-79. 
 
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 Co., 394-452. 
 7 
 
98 MILTON 
 
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 154. 
 
 Yonge, C. D., "Three Centuries of English Literature." New York, 
 1889, Appleton, 185-210. 
 
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 64-67. 
 
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 Harper, 210-216. 
 
 Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Authors." London, 
 1847, Bentley, I: 67-104. 
 
 Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
 taker, 13-105. 
 
 Sterling, John, " Essays and Tales." London, 1848, Parker, 1 : 73-87. 
 
 Contemporary Review, 19 : 198-209 (Dowden) ; 22: 427-460 (Bayne). 
 
 Quarterly Review, 143 : 186-204 and 32 : 442-457 and 63 : 29-61 (J. H. 
 Lord). 
 
 Edinburgh Review ' t 69: 112-121 (Channing); 42 : 304-346 (Macaulay); 
 25: 485-501 (Mackintosh). 
 
 Christian Examiner, 3 : 29-77 (W. E. Channing). 
 
 Lit tell' s Living Age, 44: 497-499 (Lamartine). 
 
 British Quarterly, 29: 185-214(0. Masson). 
 
 International Review, 9: 125-135 (H. C. Lodge). 
 
 North British Reviezu, 16 : 295-335 (D. Masson). 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 54: 510-519 (Pollock); 16 : 767-781 (J. A. Sy- 
 monds). 
 
 The Nation, 30 : 30-32 (G. B. Smith). 
 
 Century Magazine, 36 : 53-55 (M. Arnold) ; 14 : 53-55 (M. Arnold). 
 
 North American Review, 47: 56-73 (Emerson); 82: 388-404 (Whit- 
 ney); 22: 364-373; 31: 101-103 and 338 and 451-452; 38: 
 243-246; 41: 375-382 (W. E. Channing); 46: 216-217 (Emer- 
 son) ; 126: 536-543 (D. Masson) ; 114: 204 (Lowell). 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 54: 510-520 (Pollock); 22: 767 (J. A. Symonds). 
 
 Bibliotheca Sacra, 4: 251-269 (T. W. Hunt). 
 
 Presbyterian Review, 4: 681-709 (H. Van Dyke). 
 
 Eraser's Magazine, 17: 627-635 (W. E. Channing). 
 
 Contemporary Review, 19: 198-211 (E. Dowden); 22: 427-460 
 (Bayne). 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 31 : 554-556 (J. C. Shairp) and 380-387 (M. 
 Pattison) ; 28 : 536-547 (G. B. Smith). 
 
MILTON 99 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Sublimity Majesty. " This is the quality which 
 the poverty of our language tries to express by the words 
 solemnity, gravity, majesty, nobility, loftiness, and which, 
 name it as we may, we all feel in reading ' Paradise Lost.' 
 His rage, when almost delirious, is always a Miltonic rage ; 
 it is -grand, sublime, terrible; mingled with the scurrillities of 
 theological brawl are passages of the noblest English ever 
 written. . . . The elevation is communicated to us not 
 by the dogma or deliverance but by the sympathy. We catch 
 the contagion of the poet's mental attitude. Milton's mind 
 was full to overflowing with vague conceptions of the lofty, the 
 vast, and the sublime." Mark Patti son. 
 
 " The author seems to think but in images, and these 
 images are grand and proud as his own soul. . . . There 
 are moments when, shaking the dust of argument from off him, 
 the poet suddenly bursts forth and carries us off on the tor- 
 rent of an incomparable eloquence. It is poetic enthusiasm, 
 a flood of images shed over the dull and- arid theme, a wing- 
 stroke which sweeps us high above piddling controversy. 
 . . . The poetry of Milton is the very essence of poetry. 
 There is something indescribably heroical and magnificent 
 which overflows from Milton, even when he is engaged in the 
 most miserable discussions. . . . The eloquence is now 
 sad, tender, and again wild and tempestuous as the hurricane 
 of heaven." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 11 From one end of ' Paradise Lost ' to the other, Milton is, 
 in his diction and rhythm, constantly a great artist in the 
 great style. ... In our race are thousands of readers, 
 presently there will be millions, who know not a word of 
 Greek or Latin, and will never learn those languages. If this 
 host of readers are ever to gain any sense of the power and 
 charm of the great poets of antiquity, their way to gain it is 
 
IOO MILTON 
 
 not through the translation of the ancients but through the 
 original poetry of Milton, who has the like power and charm 
 because he has the like grand style." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " The style is always great. On the whole it is the greatest 
 in the whole range of English poetry, so great that when once 
 we have come to honor and love it, it so subdues the judgment 
 that judgment can with difficulty do its work with temperance. 
 . . . It lifts the low, gives life to the commonplace, dig- 
 nifies even the vulgar, and makes us endure that whiqh is, 
 heavy and dull. We catch ourselves admiring things not alto- 
 gether worthy of admiration because the robe they wear is so 
 royal. Splendid is the poetry of ' Comus.' Even when the 
 imagination in ' Comus ' falls it is made more remarkable by 
 the soaring strength of his loftier flight and by the majesty of 
 the verse. . . . His style is so spacious and so majestic. 
 There is majesty in the conduct of thought and a 
 music in the majesty which fills it with solemn beauty ; . . . 
 and this fulfills the ultimate need of a grand style in being the 
 easy and necessary expression of the very character and na- 
 ture of the man. . . . The majesty and the beauty of 
 1 Paradise Lost ' are beyond praise. . ' . . Throughout, 
 the grandeur of the picture increases with the grandeur of 
 the thought. . . . Nothing can be nobler in thought 
 and verse than Adam's great hymn of praise." Stopford 
 Brooke. 
 
 " The first two books of < Paradise Lost ' are like two massy 
 pillars of solid gold. . . . The strength is equal to the 
 magnitude of the conception. ... It contains the most 
 perfect example of mingled pathos and sublimity. 
 He adorns and dignifies his subject to the utmost : he sur- 
 rounds it with every possible association of 'beauty or 
 grandeur, whether moral, intellectual, or physical."- Will- 
 iam Hazlitt. 
 
 " His name is almost identified with sublimity. He is, in 
 truth, the sublimest of men. He rises, . . . by a native 
 
MILTON IOI 
 
 tendency and a god-like instinct, to the contemplation of ob- 
 jects of grandeur and awfulness. . . . The grandeur of 
 Milton's mind has thrown some shade over his milder beauties. 
 The first two books of ' Paradise Lost ' stand pre- 
 eminent for sublimity." W. E. Channing. 
 
 " As of old, he went out of this lower worla in search of 
 the sublime. . . . The sublimity of Mil ton's scenery 
 raises our mind. . . . The sublime is born into the poet. 
 . . . In his Christian and moral verse he aims at the sub- 
 lime because the sublime is the work of enthusiastic reason." 
 Taine. 
 
 " Among Milton's many great attributes, his mastery of 
 the sublime is the one which has probably received the most 
 frequent laudation." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " His lyrical poems, move they ever so softly, step loftily 
 and with something of an epic air. . . . His epic is the 
 first in sublime effect." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " Sublimity is the general and prevailing quality of ' Para- 
 dise Lost ' sublimity variously modified, sometimes descrip- 
 tive, sometimes argumentative." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " Milton's chief talent, and indeed his distinguishing excel- 
 lence, lies in the sublimity of his thoughts. ... He has 
 made the sublimity of his style equal to that of his sentiments. 
 As Milton's genius was wonderfully turned to the sublime, his 
 subject is the noblest that could have entered into the thought 
 of man. ... I do not know anything in ' Paradise 
 Lost ' more sublime than the description where the Messiah 
 is represented at the head of his angels as looking down into 
 chaos, calming its confusion, riding into the midst of it, and 
 drawing the first outline of the creation. . . . There is 
 something sublime in this part of ' Paradise Lost,' where the 
 author describes the great period of time filled -with so many 
 glorious circumstances. " Addison. 
 
 "It is certain that this author, when in a happy mood and 
 employed on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime 
 
IO2 MILTON 
 
 of any poet in any language, Homer and Lucretius and Tasso 
 not excepted." Hume. 
 
 "His more elaborate passages have the multitudinous roll 
 of thunder." Lowell. 
 
 ".Tfye, 4 specl;ies [in ' Com us '] must be read as majestic so- 
 liloquies,.;. >a>id ,he who so reads them will be enraptured with 
 their "3JQquenc, their sublimity, and their music." Ma- 
 c -.la-lay. ' - 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Up he rode 
 
 Follow'd with acclamation and the sound 
 Symphonious often thousand harps that tuned 
 Angelic harmonies; the earth, the air 
 Resounded, thou remember 'st, for thou heard'st ; 
 The heavens and all the constellations rung, 
 The planets in their station listening stood, 
 q While the bright pomp ascended jubilant. 
 Open, ye heavens, your living doors ; let in 
 The great Creator, from His work return'd 
 Magnificent, His six days' work, a world : 
 Open, and henceforth oft ; for God will deign 
 To visit oft the dwellings of just men." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven, first-born, 
 Or of the Eternal coeternal beam, 
 May I express thee unblamed ? since God is light, 
 And never but in unapproached light 
 Dwelt from eternity, dwelt but in thee, 
 Bright effluence of bright essence increate. 
 Or hear'st thou rather, pure ethereal stream, 
 Whose fountain who shall tell ? Before the Sun, 
 Before the Heavens thou wert, and at the voice 
 Of God. as with a mantle, didst invest 
 The rising world of waters dark and deep, 
 Won from the void and formless infinite." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
MILTON 103 
 
 " Ring out ye crystal spheres ! 
 Once bless our human ears, 
 (If ye have power to touch our senses so) 
 And let your silver chime 
 Move in melodious time, 
 
 And let the base of Heaven's deep organ blow. 
 And with your nine-fold harmony 
 Make up full consort to the angelic symphony." 
 
 On the Morning of Chrisfs Nativity. 
 
 2. Harmony Concord. "Tennyson calls Milton the 
 ' God-gifted organ-voice of England.' The voice of England 
 pealing in the ears of all the world for all time. Swept on 
 the flood of those great harmonies, the mighty hosts of angels 
 clash together in heaven -shaking conflict. But it is the same 
 full tide of music which flows down in sweetest lingering 
 cadence to wander through the cool groves and fragrant val- 
 leys of Paradise. . . . Both Milton and Tennyson have 
 been led by their study of classic poets to understand that 
 . . . the best music is made by the concord rather than 
 the unison of sounds. ' ' Henry van Dyke. 
 
 " The truth is that Milton was a harmonist rather than a 
 melodist. . . . He touched the keys in the epical organ- 
 pipes of our various language that have never since felt the 
 strain of such prevailing breath. It was in the larger move- 
 ments of metre that Milton was great and original." Lowell. 
 
 " He has not only imagery and vocabulary but the period, 
 the great musical phrase, a little long . . . but swaying 
 all with it, in its superb undulation." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " Nature had endowed him in no ordinary degree with that 
 most exquisite of her gifts, the ear and the passion for har- 
 mony." David Masson. 
 
 " The public has long agreed as to the merit of the most 
 remarkable passages [of ' Paradise Lost '], the incomparable 
 harmony of the numbers and the excellence of that style, which 
 no rival has been able to equal and no parodist to degrade ; 
 
IO4 MILTON 
 
 which display in their highest perfection the idiomatic 
 powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient 
 and every modern language has contributed something of 
 grace, of energy, or of music." Macaulay. 
 
 "There is a music in Milton's majesty that fills it with 
 solemn beauty. The work of the higher imagination is felt 
 as the shaping power in the poem, as the Orphean music 
 which has harmonized and built them into that unity which 
 is the highest and last demand of art. . . . One of 
 the charms of ' Lycidas ' is its solemn undertone rising like 
 a chant. . . . The lines Milton gives to Paradise in 
 metrical weight and balance perfect are equal to the height 
 -of loveliness he wishes to hold, and rise at the end when we 
 would think music and loveliness could be no more into 
 fuller beauty and more enchanted music." -Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " The sound of his lines is moulded into the expression of 
 the sentiment almost of every image. They rise or fall, pause 
 or hurry rapidly on, with exquisite art but without the least 
 trick or affectation. . . . His verse floats up and down as 
 if it had wings." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " The harmony of Milton's verse depends greatly upon 
 alliteration. ... In the melody of ' Comus ' there is 
 youthful freshness. . . . Like Vogel, he is unerringly 
 and unremittingly harmonious. . . . Music is the ele- 
 ment in which his genius lives." -John Addington Symonds. 
 
 ' ' All the treasures of sweet and solemn sound are at his 
 command. . . . Words flow through his poetry in a full 
 stream of harmony. . . . This power does not belong to 
 his musical ear but to his soul. . . . It is the gift or ex- 
 ercise of genius, which has power to impress itself on what- 
 ever it touches, and finds or frames in sounds, motions, and 
 material forms correspondences and harmonies with its own 
 fervid thoughts and feelings." W. E. Channing. 
 
 " Milton's mastery of the sublime has probably received 
 the most frequent and most emphatic laudation, but his 
 
MILTON 105 
 
 power over language, in its beauty and majesty, his mastery 
 of form and of verse, its music and loveliness, its resources 
 and charms, dignity, austerity, and awe, form the most 
 marked distinctions of Milton." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " Milton's hymns rolled with the slowness of a measured 
 song and the gravity of a declamation." Taine. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " High on a throne of royal state, which far 
 Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
 Or where the gorgeous East, with richest hand, 
 Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and gold, 
 Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
 To that bad eminence ; and from despair 
 Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
 Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue 
 Vain war with Heaven, and by success untaught 
 His proud imaginations thus displayed." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 " The oracles are dumb, 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving. 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving. 
 No nightly trance or breathed spell 
 Inspires the pale-eyed priest from the prophetic cell." 
 
 On the Morning of Christ's Nativity* 
 
 " But let my due feet never fail 
 
 To walk the studious cloister's pale, 
 And love the high embowed roof, 
 With antic pillars massy proof 
 And storied windows richly dight, 
 Casting a dim religious light." 
 
 // Penseroso. 
 
 3. Love of Natural Beauty Picturesqueness. 
 
 Certain critics have called Milton a poet of books rather than 
 
106 MILTON 
 
 of nature; but this judgment is sustained neither by the 
 majority of commentators nor by his works. In a letter ad- 
 dressed to Diodati, in 1637, Milton writes: " What God has 
 resolved concerning me, I know not, but this I know at 
 least He has instilled into me a vehement love of the beauti- 
 ful. Not with so much labour, as the fables have it, is Ceres 
 said to have sought her daughter Proserpine as I am wont to 
 seek day and night for this idea of the beautiful through all 
 the forms and faces of things. ' ' 
 
 "There is a more potent and lasting charm in Milton's 
 description of the beautiful than in the description of the sub- 
 lime. The art of landscape poetry, I take it, consists in this: 
 the choice and description of such actual images of external 
 nature as are capable of being grouped and colored by a domi- 
 nant idea or feeling. Of this art the most perfect masters are 
 Milton and Tennyson. . . . Not less remarkable is the 
 identity of spirit in Tennyson and Milton in their delicate 
 yet wholesome sympathy with Nature, their perception of the 
 relation of her moods and aspects to the human heart." 
 Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 "His description of nature shows a free and bold hand. 
 With a few strong and delicate touches he impresses, 
 as it were, his own mind on the scenes which he would 
 describe, and kindles the imagination of the gifted reader to 
 clothe them with the same radiant hues under which they 
 appeared to him. . . . We have thought so much of 
 Milton's strength and sublimity that we have ceased to recog- 
 nize . . . that he . . . is by nature the supreme 
 lover of beauty. ... No poems possess more pure love 
 of beauty than ' II Penseroso' ' L* Allegro ' and other of Mil- 
 ton's early poems." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " He does look at nature, but he sees her through books. 
 Natural impressions are received from without, but always in 
 those forms of beautiful speech in which the poets of all ages 
 have clothed them. Milton's attitude toward Nature 
 
MILTON IO7 
 
 is ... that of a poet who feels its total influences too 
 powerfully to dissect it. He is not concerned to register the 
 facts and phenomena of nature but to convey the impressions 
 they make on a sensitive soul." Mark Partisan. 
 
 ' 'However his poems are involved, Milton has always a 
 simple motive. And this is one reason why children as well as 
 others understand and have pleasure in them. The picturesque- 
 ness of the scenes, the clear-cut vivid outlines of the things 
 described and this is also a constant excellence of Milton, 
 though he sometimes wilfully spoils it by digression is also 
 a source of delight to young and old." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 "We hear the pealing organ, but the incense on the altars is 
 also there, and the statues of the gods are ranged around. The 
 ear indeed predominates over the eye, because it is more im- 
 mediately affected, and because the language of music blends 
 more immediately with and forms a more natural accompani- 
 ment to the variable and indefinite associations of ideas con- 
 veyed by words. But where the associations of the imagi- 
 nation are not the principal thing, the individual object is 
 given by Milton with equal force and beauty. He refines on 
 his descriptions of beauty, loading sweets on sweets till the 
 sense aches with them. . . . He describes objects of 
 which he has only read in books with the vividness of actual 
 observation. He makes words tell as pictures." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Sabrina fair, 
 
 Listen where thou art sitting 
 Under the glassy, cool, translucent wave, 
 
 In twisted braids of lilies knitting 
 The loose train of thy amber-dropping hair ; 
 Listen for dear honour's sake, 
 Goddess of the silver lake ; 
 Listen and save, 
 
108 MILTON 
 
 Listen and appear to us, 
 In name of great Oceanus ; 
 
 By all the nymphs that nightly dance 
 Upon thy streams with wily glance, 
 Rise, rise, and heave thy rosy head 
 From thy coral-paven bed, 
 Till thou our summons answered have 
 Listen and save." Comus. 
 
 " On either side 
 
 Acanthus and each odorous bushy shrub 
 Fenced up the verdant wall ; each beauteous flower, 
 Iris all hues, roses, and jessamin 
 
 Reared high their flourished heads between, and wrought 
 Mosaic ; under foot the violet, 
 Crocus, and hyacinth with rich inlay 
 Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone 
 Of costliest emblem." Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Betwixt them lawns or level downs and flocks 
 Grazing the tender herb were interposed, 
 Or palmy hillock ; or the flowery lap 
 Of some irrigous valley spread her store, 
 Flowers of all hue and without thorn the rose ; 
 Another side, umbrageous grots and caves 
 Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine 
 Lays forth her purple grape and creeps 
 Luxuriant ; meanwhile murmuring waters fall 
 Down the slope hills dispersed, or in the lake, 
 That to the fringed bank with myrtle crowned 
 Her crystal mirror holds, their streams unite. 
 The birds their quire apply ; airs, vernal airs, 
 Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 
 The trembling leaves." Paradise Lost. 
 
 4. Vastness Amplitude. This quality is nearly re- 
 lated to the majesty of Milton's style, already discussed, and 
 is continually found in connection with it ; and yet the two 
 
MILTON 109 
 
 qualities are not identical ; for we may find numerous passages 
 where the treatment is grand and sonorous while the element 
 of spaciousness is not present. On the other hand, however, 
 we seldom if ever have spaciousness without grandeur. 
 
 11 His is the large utterance of the early gods. ... He 
 showed from the first that larger style which was to be his 
 peculiar distinction. . . . He loved phrases of towering 
 port, in which every member dilated stands like Teneriffe or 
 Atlas. ... In reading ' Paradise Lost ' one has a feeling 
 of vastness. You float under an illimitable sky, brimmed with 
 sunshine or hung with constellations ; the abysses of space are 
 about you ; you hear the cadenced surges of an unseen ocean ; 
 thunder mutters around the horizon ; and if the scene changes, 
 it is with an elemental movement like the shifting of mighty 
 winds. . . . There are no such vistas and avenues of 
 verse' as his. In reading ' Paradise Lost ' one has a feeling of 
 spaciousness which no other poet gives. . . . Whatever he 
 touches swells and towers." Lowell. 
 
 " Milton's delight was to sport in the wide regions of pos- 
 sibility ; reality was a scene too narrow for his mind. He 
 sent his faculties out upon discovery into worlds where only 
 imagination can travel. . . . His great excellence is am- 
 plitude. ... He had accustomed his imagination to 
 unrestrained indulgence, and his conceptions therefore were 
 extensive. ' ' Samuel Johnson. 
 
 "Milton needs the grand and infinite; he lavishes them. 
 His eyes are only content in limitless space, and he produces 
 colossuses to fill it. Such is Satan wallowing on the surges 
 of the livid sea. Milton's hell is vast and vague. . . . 
 He wanted a great and flowing verse, an ample and sounding 
 strophe, vast periods of fourteen and four-and-twenty lines. 
 . . . His genius multiplies grand landscapes and colossal 
 apparitions. " Taine. 
 
 " Its sign [that of Milton's genius] is strength, but strength 
 seraphic ; . . . a power of sustained flight, of far-reach- 
 
I IO MILTON 
 
 ing vision, of lofty eloquence, such as belongs to the seraphim 
 -alone." Henry Van Dyke. 
 
 " He raises his images of terror to a gigantic elevation that 
 makes ' Ossa like a wart.' "William Hazlitt. 
 
 " No style, when one has lived in it, is so spacious and so 
 majestic a place to walk in." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 "His poetry reminds us of the ocean." W. E. Channing. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
 With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
 That sparkling blazed ; his other parts besides 
 Prone on the flood, extended long and large, 
 Lay floating many a rood ; in bulk as huge 
 As ... 
 That sea-beast 
 
 Leviathan, which God of all his works 
 Created hugest that swim the ocean stream : 
 Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
 The pilot of some small night-foundered skiff 
 Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
 With fixed anchor in his scaly rind 
 Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
 Invests the sea, and wished morn delays : 
 So stretched out huge in length the arch fiend lay." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 " He scarce had ceased, when the superior fiend 
 
 Was moving toward the shore : his ponderous shield, 
 
 Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 
 
 Behind him cast ; the broad circumference 
 
 Hung on his shoulder like the moon, whose orb 
 
 Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
 
 At evening from the top of Fesole ; 
 
 His spear, to equal which the tallest pine, 
 
 Hewn on Norwegian hills to be the mast 
 
 Of some great Admiral, were but the wand." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
MILTON III 
 
 "Thence, full of anguish driven, 
 
 The space of seven continued nights he rode 
 With darkness ; thrice the equinoctial line 
 He circled ; four times crossed the car of night 
 From pole to pole, traversing each colure ; 
 On the eighth returned, and on the coast averse, 
 From entrance on cherubic watch, by stealth 
 Found unsuspected way." Paradise Lost. 
 
 5. Egoism Conscious Inspiration. Milton him- 
 self spoke of his great epic as " a work not to be raised from 
 the heat of youth or the vapors of wine : like that which 
 flows at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist or the 
 trencher fury of a rhyming parasite, nor to be obtained by 
 the invocation of Dame Memory and her siren daughters, but 
 by devout prayer to that eternal Spirit who can enrich with 
 all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with 
 the hallowed fire of His altar, to touch and purify the lips 
 of whom He pleases." 
 
 " There is an intolerant egotism which identifies itself 
 with omnipotence, and whose sublimity is its apology ; there 
 is an intolerable egotism which subordinates the sun to the 
 watch in its own fob. Milton was of the former kind. . . - 
 I have no manner of doubt, that he, like Dante, believed him- 
 self divinely inspired with what he had to utter. 
 From the first he looked upon himself as a man dedicated and 
 set apart. . . . Plainly enough, here was a man who had 
 received something more than episcopal ordination. . . . 
 Milton's respect for himself and his own mind and its move- 
 ments rises well-nigh to veneration." Lowell. 
 
 11 Connected with this austerity of character, discernible in 
 Milton even in his youth, may be noted, also, 
 a haughty yet modest self-esteem and consciousness of his 
 own powers. Throughout all of Milton's works there may be 
 discerned a vein of this noble egotism, this unbashful self- 
 assertion. Frequently, in arguing with an opponent or in 
 
112 MILTON 
 
 setting forth his own views on any subject of discussion, he 
 passes, by a very slight topical connection, into an account of 
 himself, his education, his designs, and his relations to the 
 matter in question ; in his later years Milton evidently be- 
 lieved himself to be, if not the greatest man in England, at 
 least the greatest writer." David Masson. 
 
 " Milton loves to present to his own imagination the glory 
 of his strength and the greatness of his past achievements 
 and his present afflicted state. ... He looked upon his 
 strength as something intrusted to him." Edward Dowden. 
 
 "He had a lofty and steady confidence in himself." 
 Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " A sense of divine benediction runs through his epic poem 
 from beginning to end.',' Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " His poetry is full of personal memories, and his polemi- 
 cal works become at times memories of his life, passionate 
 and naif memories, where the writer reveals himself without 
 any disguise." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " ' Comus ' is marked by more self-conscious art than any 
 poem of its character which England has yet known. . . . 
 His later poems reveal his sustained purpose to write a heroic 
 poem. ... It [his style] reveals the man more than the 
 thought. " Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Every thing about him became as it were pontifical, al- 
 most sacramental." Augustine Birrell. 
 
 " What other poet has shown so sincere a sense of the 
 grandeur of his vocation and a moral effort so sublime and 
 constant to make and keep himself worthy of it ? " Matthew 
 Arnold. 
 
 11 He had girded himself up and, as it were, sanctified him- 
 self for this service from his youth." William Hazlitt. 
 
MILTON 113 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Or, if Sion's hill 
 
 Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that flowed 
 Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
 Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, 
 That with no middle flight intends to soar 
 Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
 Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
 And chiefly Thou, O Spirit, that dost prefer 
 Before all temples the upright heart and pure, 
 Instruct me, for Thou knowest ; Thou from the first 
 Wast present, and with mighty wings outspread 
 Dove-like satst brooding on the vast abyss, 
 And made it pregnant ; what in me is dark 
 Illumine ; what is low raise and support ; 
 That to the height of this great argument 
 I may assert eternal Providence, 
 And justify the ways of God to man." Paradise Lost. 
 
 " So much the rather thou, celestial light, 
 
 Shine inward, and the mind through all her powers 
 Irradiate ; there plant eyes ; all mist from thence 
 Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight." Paradise Lost. 
 
 " If answerable style I can obtain 
 Of my celestial patroness, who deigns 
 Her nightly visitation unimplored, 
 And dictates to me slumbering, or inspires 
 Easy my unpremeditated verse ; 
 Since first this subject for heroic song 
 Pleased me long choosing and beginning late." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 6. Moral Elevation Purity. Carlyle has called Mil- 
 ton " the moral king of English literature." In his second 
 " Defence of the People of England " Milton declares, con- 
 cerning his experience on the Continent : " I again take God 
 8 
 
114 MILTON 
 
 to witness that in all these places, where so many things are 
 considered lawful, I lived sound and untouched from all prof- 
 ligacy and vice, having this thought perpetually before me, 
 that though I might escape the eyes of men, I certainly could 
 not the eyes of God. ' ' And later he writes : "He who would 
 not be frustrate of his hope to write well hereafter in laudable 
 things, ought himself to be a true poem." Milton was sen- 
 suous, as he declared all poetry should be, but he was never 
 sensual. His conception of the moral possibilities of poetry 
 is best expressed in his own words : " These [poetic] abilities, 
 wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely 
 bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every na- 
 tion ; and are of power beside the office of a pulpit, to im- 
 breed and cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and 
 public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind and set 
 the affections in right tune ; to celebrate in glorious and lofty 
 hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness and 
 what he works and what he suffers to be wrought with high 
 providence in his church ; to sing the victorious agonies of 
 martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of just and pious 
 nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of 
 Christ." 
 
 " Milton consecrated his thoughts as well as his words. 
 He praised everywhere chaste love, piety, generosity, 
 heroic force. . . . They [the Masques] were amusements 
 for the castle ; he made out of them lectures on magnanimity 
 and constancy. . . . He was born with the instinct of 
 noble things. ' ' Taine. 
 
 " Look at the Lady in ' Comus ' ! she is the sweet embodi- 
 ment of Milton's youthful ideal of virtue, clothed with the 
 fairness of opening womanhood, armed with the sun-clad pow- 
 er of chastity. Darkness and danger cannot stir the constant 
 mood of her calm thoughts ! Evil things have no power upon 
 her, but shrink abashed from her presence." Henry Van 
 Dyke. 
 
MILTON 1 1 5 
 
 " Thy soul was like a star ; and dwelt apart ; 
 Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
 So didst thou travel on life's common way, 
 In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
 The lowliest duties on itself did lay." Wordsworth. 
 " His sympathy with festivities is modified by his native 
 gravity and holiness to the quiet delight in those beautiful 
 things which had in them purity and temperance. 
 The stately purity of thought and life is one of the foundations 
 of his stately style. ' ' Stopford Brooke. 
 
 11 There are a few characters which have stood the closest 
 scrutiny and the severest tests, which have been tried in the 
 furnace and have proved true, . . . and which are 
 visibly stamped with the image and superscription of the most 
 High. Of these was Milton. Certain high moral dispositions 
 Milton had from nature ; he sedulously trained and developed 
 them until they became habits of great power. . . . Mil- 
 ton's power of style has for its great character elevation, which 
 clearly comes in the main from a moral quality in him his 
 pureness. How high, clear, and splendid is his pureness ; 
 and how intimately does its might enter into the voice of his 
 poetry ! What gives Milton's professions such a stamp of their 
 own is their accent of absolute sincerity. In this elevated 
 strain of moral pureness his life was really pitched ; its strong 
 immortal beauty passed into the diction and rhythm of his 
 poetry." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " Milton's every line breathes sanctity of thought and pure- 
 ness of manners, except when the train of narration requires 
 the introduction of the rebellious spirits, and even then they 
 are compelled to acknowledge the subjugation to God in such 
 a manner as excites reverence and confirms piety." Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
 " Milton stands erect, commanding, still visible as a man 
 among men, and reads the laws of the moral sentiment to the 
 new-born race. He is identified in the mind with all select 
 
Il6 MILTON 
 
 and holy images, with the supreme interests of the human race. 
 . It is the ardent aspiration after pure and noble life, 
 the aspiration which stamps every line he wrote, verse or prose, 
 with a dignity as of an heroic age. This gives consistency to 
 all his utterances." Mark Pattison. 
 
 "In his long commerce with ancient and modern writers, 
 he was able to preserve the native purity of his soul, to form 
 a sublime ideal bent of purity, poetry, and fame." Edrnond 
 Scherer. 
 
 " He reverenced moral purity and elevation, ... as 
 the inspirer of the intellect and especially of the higher efforts 
 of poetry. His moral character was as strongly marked as his 
 intellectual, and it may be expressed in one word, magnanim- 
 ity." W. E. Charming. 
 
 " He had a gravity in his temper, not melancholy ; not till 
 the later part of his life sour, morbid, or ill-tempered ; but 
 a certain serenity of mind a mind not condescending to lit- 
 tle things.' ' Walter Bagehot. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " So dear to heaven is saintly chastity 
 That when a soul is found sincerely so, 
 A thousand liveried angels lackey her, 
 Driving far off each thing of sin and guilt ; 
 And in clear dream and solemn vision, 
 Tell her of things that no gross ear can hear ; 
 Till oft converse with heavenly habitants 
 Begins to cast a beam on th' outward shape, 
 The unpolluted temple of the mind, 
 And turn it by degrees to the soul's essence, 
 Till all be made immortal." Comus. 
 
 " Lady, that in the prime of earliest youth 
 Wisely hast shunned the broad way and the green, 
 And with those few art eminently seen, 
 That labour up the hill of heavenly truth. 
 
MILTON 117 
 
 The better part, with Mary and with Ruth, 
 Chosen thou hast ; and they that overween, 
 And at thy growing virtues fret their spleen, 
 No anger find in thee, but pity and ruth. 
 
 Thy care is fixed, and zealously attends 
 To fill thy odorous lamp with deeds of light, 
 And hope that reaps not shame. Therefore be sure 
 
 Thou, when the bridegroom with his feastful friends 
 Passes to bliss at the mid-hour of night, 
 Hast gained thy entrance, virgin wise and pure." 
 
 To a Virtuous Young Lady. 
 
 " Servant of God, well done ! Well hast thou fought 
 The better fight, who single hast maintained 
 Against revolted multitudes the cause 
 Of truth, in word mightier than they in arms, 
 And for the testimony of truth hast borne 
 Universal reproach far worse to bear 
 Than violence ; for this was all thy care 
 To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
 Judged thee perverse." Paradise Lost. 
 
 7. Fondness for the Indefinite. "He was fonder 
 of the vague, perhaps I should better say the indefinite, where 
 more is meant than meets the ear, than any other of our poets. 
 . . . He produces his effects by dilating our imaginations 
 with an impalpable hint rather than by concentrating them 
 upon too precise particulars. ... He generalizes always 
 instead of specifying. . . . He is too wise to hamper 
 himself with any statement for which he can be brought to 
 book, but wraps himself in a mist of looming indefiniteness." 
 Lowell. 
 
 " His characters rise before our eyes like superhuman statues ; 
 and, their far removal rendering vain our curious hands, pre- 
 serves our admiration and their majesty. We rise further and 
 higher to the origin of things, among eternal beings, to the 
 commencement of thought and life, to the battle of God in 
 this unknown world, where sentiments and existences, raised 
 
Il8 MILTON 
 
 above the ken of man, elude his judgment and criticism to 
 command his veneration and awe." Taine. 
 
 "The English poet [Milton] has never thought of taking 
 the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast 
 bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in 
 length and floating many a rood, equal in size to the earth- 
 born enemies of Jove or to the sea-monster which the mariner 
 mistakes for an island. . . . Milton avoids the loathsome 
 details [of Dante] and takes refuge in indistinct but solemn 
 and tremendous imagery." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 "There is no subject so vast or so terrible as to repel or 
 intimidate him. . . . The overpowering grandeur of a 
 theme kindles and attracts him. . . . An indefiniteness in 
 the description of Satan's person excites without shocking the 
 imagination." W. E. Channing. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "A dungeon horrible on all sides round 
 As one great furnace flamed, yet from these flames 
 No light but rather darkness visible 
 Served only to discover sights of woe, 
 Regions of sorrow, doleful shades." Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Beyond this flood a frozen continent 
 
 Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms 
 Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land 
 Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems 
 Of ancient pile." Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Before their eyes in sudden view appear 
 The secrets of the hoary deep a dark 
 Illimitable ocean, without bound, 
 
 Without dimension ; where length, breadth, and height 
 And time and place are lost ; where eldest Night 
 And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold 
 Eternal anarchy amidst the noise 
 Of endless wars, and by confusion stand." Paradise Lost. 
 
MILTON 119 
 
 8. Profound Learning Intellectuality. This en- 
 dowment appears continually both in Milton's prose and in 
 his poetry. In his early manhood Milton writes to a friend as 
 follows : "I who certainly have not merely wetted the tip of 
 my lips in the stream of these [the classical] languages, but 
 in proportion to my years have swallowed the most copious 
 draughts, can yet sometimes retire with avidity and delight to 
 feast on Dante, Petrarch, and many others." 
 
 " His literature was unquestionably great. He read all the 
 languages which are considered either learned or polite ; He- 
 brew with its two dialects, Latin, Greek, Italian, French, and 
 Spanish. In Latin his skill was such as places him in the first 
 rank of writers and critics ; he appears to have cultivated 
 Italian with uncommon diligence. . . . When he can- 
 not raise wonder by the sublimity of his mind, he gives delight 
 by its fertility. . . . He was master of his language in its 
 full ex ten t . ' ' Samuel Johnson . 
 
 "The author unfolds the treasures of his learning, heaping 
 up the testimony of Scripture, passages from the fathers, and 
 quotations from the poets, laying sacred and profane antiquity 
 alike under contribution, and subtly discussing the sense of 
 this and that Greek or Hebrew term." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 "Milton's learning attends him at every step; he never 
 utters himself except through learned lips, in well-considered 
 phrase. . . . He is the poet of the scholars." J. C. 
 Shairp. 
 
 "Milton seems ambitious of letting us know, by his excur- 
 sions on free will and predestination and his many glances 
 upon history, astronomy, geography, and the like, as well as 
 by terms and phrases he sometimes makes use of, that he is 
 acquainted with the whole circle of arts and sciences." 
 Addison. 
 
 " He was a profound scholar, a man of vast compass of 
 thought, imbued thoroughly with all ancient and modern 
 learning, to master, to mould, to impregnate with his intel- 
 
I2O MILTON 
 
 lectual power, his great and various acquisitions. 
 The very splendor of his poetic fame has tended to obscure 
 or conceal the extent of his mind. . . . Milton has that 
 universality which marks the highest order of intellect." 
 W. E. Channing. 
 
 "The power of his mind is stamped on every line. . . . 
 We feel ourselves under the influence of a mighty intellect, 
 which, the nearer it approaches to others, becomes more dis- 
 tinct from them." William Hazlitt. 
 
 "Vast knowledge, close logic, grand passion; these were 
 his marks. . . . He was eminently learned, elegant, trav- 
 elled, philosophic, and of high worldly culture for the times. 
 . . . The phrases in Milton are immense; page-long periods 
 are necessary to enclose the train of so many linked arguments 
 and so many accumulated metaphors around the governing 
 thought. ... In the limits of a single work are found 
 the events and the feelings of several centuries and of a whole 
 nation." Taine. 
 
 "Milton is not a man of the fields but of books. His 
 life is his study, and when he steps abroad into the air he car- 
 ries his study thoughts with him." Mark Pattison. 
 
 "Milton and Tennyson are the most learned, the most 
 classical of all English poets." Edward Dowden. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned 
 Or of revived Adonis, or renowned 
 Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son ; 
 Or that, not mystic, where the sapient king 
 Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse. 
 
 pleasing was his shape, 
 And lovely ; never since of serpent kind 
 Lovelier ; not those that in Illyria changed 
 Hermione and Cadmus, or the god 
 
MILTON 121 
 
 In Epidaurus ; nor to which transformed 
 Ammonian Jove, or Capitoline was seen ; 
 He with Olympias ; this with her who bore 
 Scipio the height of Rome." Paradise Lost. 
 
 11 Black, but such as in esteem 
 
 Prince Memnon's sister might beseem, 
 
 Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
 
 To set her beauty's praise above 
 
 The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended : 
 
 Yet thou art higher far descended ; 
 
 Thee, bright-haired Vesta long of yore 
 
 To solitary Saturn bore ; 
 
 His daughter she (in Saturn's reign, 
 
 Such mixture was not held a stain) 
 
 Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
 
 He met her, and in secret shades 
 
 Of woody Ida's inmost grove, 
 
 While yet there was no fear of Jove." // Penseroso. 
 
 " Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
 Of that inflamed sea he stood, and call'd 
 His legions, angel forms, who lay entranced 
 Thick as autumnal leaves that strew the brooks 
 In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
 High over-arched imbower ; or scattered sedge 
 Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
 Had vexed the Red Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 
 Busiris and his Memphian chivalry, 
 While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
 The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
 From the safe shore their floating carcasses." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 9. Adaptation of Sound to Sense. " I imagine that 
 there are more perfect examples in Milton of musical expres- 
 sion, or of an adaptation of the sound and movement of the 
 verse to the meaning of the passage, than in all our other 
 writers, whether of rhyme or of blank verse, put together (with 
 the exception of Shakespeare). . . . Read any other 
 
llJct 
 
 122 MILTON 
 
 blank verse except Milton's Thompson's, Young's, Cowper's, 
 Wordsworth's and it will be found, from the want of this 
 same insight 'into the hidden soul of harmony,' to be mere 
 lumbering prose." William Hazlitt. 
 
 i( We may be certain that when so great an artist in verse 
 as Milton was writing, lines which ( seem to us unmusical were 
 
 made so-*4tb^a jjurpose r 1. He insists upon accent 
 
 which seems to us strangely put, in order that he may make 
 some particular thought or some particular thing in his descrip- 
 tion emphatic. " Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " He was master of his language in its full extent ; and has 
 selected the melodious words with such diligence that from 
 his books alone the art of English poetry might be learned." 
 Samuel Johnscn. 
 
 11 Rarely or never was sense better linked to sound than in 
 some of the lines of ' Z' Allegro' and ' // Penseroso? " W. 
 M. Rossetti. 
 
 11 His words are the words of one who made a study of the 
 language, as a poet studies language, searching its capacities 
 for the expression of surging emotion. Milton is the first 
 English writer who, possessing in the ancient models a stand- 
 ard of the effect which could be produced by the choice of 
 words, set himself to the conscious study of our native tongue, 
 with a firm faith in its as yet undeveloped powers as an in- 
 strument of thought." David Masson. 
 
 " His rhythm is as admirable when it is unusual as when it- 
 is simplest." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But chief the spacious hall 
 
 Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, 
 Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees 
 In spring time, when the sun with Taurus rides, 
 Pour forth their populous youth about the hive." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
MILTON 123 
 
 " Haste thee, Nymph, and bring with thee 
 Jest and youthful Jollity, 
 Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles, 
 Nods and Becks and wreathed Smiles, 
 Such as hang on Hebe's cheek, 
 And love to live in dimple sleek ; 
 Sport that wrinkled Care derides 
 And Laughter, holding both his sides ; 
 Come and trip it, as you go, 
 On the light fantastic toe." V Allegro. 
 
 " The oracles are dumb ; 
 No voice or hideous hum 
 
 Runs through the arched roof in words deceiving ; 
 Apollo from his shrine 
 Can no more divine, 
 
 With hollow shriek the steep of Delphos leaving." 
 
 Hymn on the Morning of Christ's Nativity. 
 
 " Meanwhile welcome joy and feast, 
 Midnight shout and revelry, 
 Tipsy dance and jollity. 
 Braid your locks with rosy twine, 
 Dropping odours, dropping wine. 
 Rigour now is gone to bed, 
 And advice with scrupulous head. 
 Strict age and sour severity, 
 With their grave saws in slumber lie. 
 We, that are of purer fire, 
 Imitate the starry quire ; 
 Who, in their nightly watchful spheres, 
 Lead in swift rounds the months and years." 
 
 Comus. 
 
 10. Equanimity Serene Dignity. While Milton's 
 prose is frequently disfigured with ill-natured expressions, his 
 verse generally flows on undisturbed, like a deep stream. 
 
 "The strength of his mind overcame every calamity 
 Neither blindness nor gout nor age nor penury nor domestic 
 
124 MILTON 
 
 afflictions nor political disappointments nor abuse nor pro- 
 scription nor neglect, had power to disturb his sedate and 
 majestic patience." Macaulay. 
 
 " He did not face objects on a level, as a mortal, but from 
 on high, like those archangels of Goethe, who embrace at a 
 glance the whole ocean lashing its coasts and the earth rolling 
 on, wrapt in the harmony of the fraternal stars." Taine. 
 
 " Himself a poem. Grave, serene, wholly given up Lo the 
 contemplation of heavenly things, slowly maturing the work 
 of his life, isolated in his generation by the very force of his 
 genius. His soul, as Wordsworth has said, was ' like a star 
 and dwelt apart.' He has an indefinable serenity and vic- 
 toriousness, a sustained equality, an indomitable power; one 
 might almost say that he wraps us in the skirt of his robe and 
 wafts us with him to the eternal regions where he himself 
 dwells. ' ' Edmond Scherer. 
 
 "As a man moving among other men, he possessed, in 
 that moral seriousness and stoic scorn of temptation which 
 characterized him, a spring of ever present pride, dignifying 
 his whole bearing among his fellows, and at times arousing 
 him to a kingly intolerance. He was one of those servants 
 to whom God had entrusted the stewardship of the ten 
 talents. ' ' David Masson. 
 
 " The strength of his mind overcame every calamity. 
 There is no such unfailing dignity as his." Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " When I consider how my light is spent 
 
 Ere half my days in this dark world and wide ; 
 And that one talent which is death to hide 
 Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent 
 To serve therewith my Maker and present 
 My true account, lest He, returning, chide ; 
 ' Doth God exact day-labour, light denied ? ' 
 I fondly ask : but Patience, to prevent 
 
MILTON 125 
 
 That murmur, soon replies, * God doth not need 
 Either man's work or his own gifts ; who best 
 Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state 
 
 Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed, 
 And post o'er land and ocean without rest ; 
 They also serve who only stand and wait.' " 
 
 Sonnet on His Blindness. 
 
 " Cyriack, this three years' day these eyes, though clear, 
 To outward view, of blemish or of spot, 
 Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot, 
 Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 
 Of sun, or moon, or star throughout the year, 
 Or man, or woman. Yet I argue not 
 Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate a jot 
 Of heart or hope ; but still bear up and steer 
 Right onward. What supports me, dost thou ask ? 
 The conscience, friend, to have lost them overplied 
 In liberty's defence, my noble task, 
 Of which all Europe rings from side to side. 
 This thought might lead me through the world's vain mask 
 Content, though blind, had I no better guide." 
 
 To Cyriack Skinner. 
 
 " But not to me returns 
 Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, 
 Or sight of vernal bloom or summer rose, 
 Or flocks or herds or human face divine ; 
 But cloud instead, and ever during dark. 
 Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men 
 Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair 
 Presented with a universal blank 
 Of nature's works to me expunged and raised, 
 And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
 So much the rather then, Celestial Light, 
 Shine inward, and the mind thro' all her powers 
 Irradiate ; there plant eyes ; all mist from them 
 Purge and disperse that I may see and tell 
 Of things invisible to mortal sight." Paradise Lost. 
 
126 MILTON 
 
 ii. Incongruity Contradiction Unnaturalness. 
 
 A certain class of critics, notably among the French, is 
 fond of making merry over Milton's incongruity. While the 
 consensus of critical opinion seems not to uphold Scherer's 
 dictum that " Paradise Lost " is "a poem which is at once the 
 most extraordinary and at the same time the most intolerable 
 in existence," we cannot fairly ignore the force of these ad- 
 verse criticisms. 
 
 " The confusion of spirit and matter which pervades the 
 whole narration of the war of Heaven fills it with incongruity ; 
 and the book in which it is related is, I believe, the favorite 
 of children, and gradually neglected as knowledge is increased. 
 In ( Lycidas,' the shepherd is likewise now a feeder 
 of sheep and afterwards an ecclesiastical preacher, a superin- 
 tendent of a Christian flock." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 11 Milton is a clumsy imitator of the Greeks, who carica- 
 tures creation and who, while Moses represents the Eternal 
 Being as creating the world by his word, makes the Messiah 
 take a big compass out of a cupboard in heaven to trace out 
 the work. . . . His marriage of Sin and Death, and the 
 snakes of which Sin is delivered, make any man of tolerably del- 
 icate taste sick, and his long description of a hospital is only 
 good for a grave-digger. . . . The archangel Michael 
 leads Adam to a hill and delivers a complete course of lectures 
 to him on sacred history. . . . ' Paradise Lost ' is not 
 only a theological poem two words which cry out at finding 
 themselves united but it is at the same time a commentary 
 on texts of Scripture. ... In fixing on such a subject, 
 Milton was obliged to treat the whole story as a literal and 
 authentic history ; and, worse still, to take a side on the 
 questions which it starts. Now these questions are the very 
 thorniest in theology : and so it comes about that Milton, who 
 intended to instruct us, merely launches us on a sea of diffi- 
 culties. . . . The long discourses with which he fills the 
 gaps between the action are only sermons, and do but make 
 
MILTON 127 
 
 evident the absence of dramatic matter. . . . We see a 
 battle, but we cannot take either the fight or the fighters seri- 
 ously. A God who can be resisted is not a God. 
 The poem only became possible at the cost of this impossi- 
 bility. . . . He makes Lucifer masquerade, now as a 
 toad, now as a pigmy ; he makes the devil fire cannon in 
 heaven. When the day comes for him to be able at last to 
 realize the dreams of his youth and endow his country with 
 an epic, he will construct it of two matters, of gold and of 
 clay, of sublimity and of scholasticism, and will leave us a 
 poem which is at once the most extraordinary and at the 
 same time the most intolerable. ' Paradise Lost ' has shared 
 the same fate of its hero, that is to say, of the devil. The 
 idea of Satan is a contradictory idea ; for it is contradictory 
 to know God and yet attempt rivalry with Him." Edmond 
 Scherer. 
 
 "Ecstasy alone renders visible and credible the objects of 
 ecstasy. If you tell us of the exploits of the Deity as you tell 
 us of Cromwell's, in a grave and lofty tone, we do not see 
 God; and, as He constitutes the whole of your poem, we do 
 not see anything. . . . Milton's poem, while it sup- 
 presses lyrical illusion, admits critical inquiry. . . .- No 
 longer hearing odes, we would see objects and souls : we ask 
 that Adam and Eve should act in conformity with their prim- 
 itive nature ; that God, Satan, and Messiah should act and 
 feel in conformity with their superhuman nature ; Shake- 
 speare would hardly have been equal to the task ; Milton, 
 the logician and reasoner, failed in it. He gives us correct 
 solemn discourse and gives us nothing more ; his charac- 
 ters are speeches, and in their sentiments we find only heaps 
 of puerilities and contradictions. ... I listen [to Adam 
 and Eve] and I hear an English household, two readers 
 of the period Colonel Hutchinson and his wife. Good 
 Heavens ! dress them at once. People with so much culture 
 should have invented before all a pair of trousers and modesty. 
 
128 MILTON 
 
 This Adam entered Paradise via England. 
 She [Eve], like a good housewife, talks about the menu. 
 . . . She makes sweet wine, perry, creams ; scatters flowers 
 and leaves under the table. What an excellent housewife ! 
 What a great many votes she will gain among the country 
 squires, when Adam stands for Parliament ! Adam belongs 
 to the Opposition, is a Whig, a Puritan. . . . The an- 
 gel, though ethereal, eats like a Lincolnshire farmer. . . . 
 At table Eve listens to the angel's stories, then discreetly rises 
 at dessert, when they are getting into politics. . . . She 
 rebels with a little prick of proud vanity, like a young lady 
 who mayn't go out by herself. She has her way, goes alone, 
 and eats the apple. Here interminable speeches come down 
 on the reader, as numerous and cold as winter showers. . . . 
 The serpent seduces Eve by a collection of arguments wor- 
 thy of the punctilious Chillingworth. . . . What is 
 smaller than a god sunk to the level of a king and a man ! 
 
 Milton's Jehovah is a grave king, who maintains a 
 suitable state, something like Charles I. ... We per- 
 ceive that Milton's Jehovah is connected with the theologian 
 James I., versed in the arguments of Arminians and Gomarists, 
 very clever at the distingue, and before all incomparably te- 
 dious. . . . Goethe's God, half abstraction, half legend, 
 source of calm oracles, a vision just beheld after a pyramid of 
 ecstatic strophes, greatly excels this Miltonic God, a business 
 man, a schoolmaster, an ostentatious man. . . . Milton's 
 heaven is a Whitehall filled with bedizened footmen. The an- 
 gels are the choristers, whose business is to sing cantatas about 
 the king. . . . Milton describes the tables, the dishes, 
 the wine, the vessels. It is a popular festival ; I miss the fire- 
 works, the bell-ringing, as in London. . . . Heaven is 
 partitioned off like a good map. . . . These sorry angels 
 have their minds as well disciplined as their limbs ; they have 
 passed their youth in a class in logic and in a drill school. 
 
 What a heaven ! It is enough to disgust a man with 
 
MILTON 
 
 Paradise ; anyone would rather enter Charles I.'s troop of 
 lackeys or Cromwell's Ironsides. We have orders of the day, 
 a hierarchy, exact submission, extra-duties, disputes, regu- 
 lated ceremonials, prostration, etiquette, furbished arms, ar- 
 senals, depots of chariots and ammunition. Was it worth 
 while leaving earth to find in heaven carriage-works, build- 
 ings, artillery, a manual of tactics, the art of salutation, and 
 the Almanac de Gotha? " Taine. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " So down they sat, 
 
 And to their viands fell ; nor seemingly 
 The angel, nor in mist, the common gloss 
 Of theologians ; but with keen dispatch 
 Of real hunger and concoctive heat 
 To transubstantiate ; what redounds, transpires 
 Through spirits with ease ; nor wonder, if by fire 
 Of sooty coal the empiric alchemist 
 Can turn, or holds it possible to turn, 
 Metals or drossiest ore to perfect gold, 
 As from the mine. Meanwhile at table, Eve 
 Ministered naked, and their flowing cups 
 With pleasant liquors drowned." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 " If this be our condition, thus to dwell 
 In narrow circuit straitened by a foe, 
 Subtle or violent, we not endued 
 Single with like defence, wherever met, 
 How are we happy, still in fear of harm ? 
 But harm precedes not sin : only our foe, 
 Tempting, affronts us with his foul esteem 
 Of our integrity : his foul esteem 
 Sticks no dishonour on our front, but turns 
 Foul on himself ; then wherefore shunned or feared 
 By us ? who rather double honour, gain 
 9 
 
130 MILTON 
 
 From his surmise proved false, find peace within, 
 Favor from Heaven, our witness from the event. 
 And what is faith, love, virtue, unassayed 
 Alone, without exterior help sustained ? " 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
 " Immediate in a flame, 
 From those deep-throated engines belched, 
 
 . . . . Chained thunderbolts and hail 
 Of iron globes ; which on the victor host 
 Levelled, with such impetuous fury smote, 
 That whom they hit none on their feet might stand, 
 Though standing else as rocks, but down they fell 
 By thousands, angel on archangel rolled." 
 
 Paradise Lost. 
 
DRYDEN, 1631-1700 
 
 Biographical Outline. John Dryden, born August 9, 
 1631, at Aldwinckle Allsaints, Northamptonshire; his father 
 was a justice of the peace, the third son of a baronet, and his 
 mother the daughter of a clergyman ; Dryden gets " his first 
 learning ' ' at Tichmarsh, where a monument was afterward 
 erected to him and to his parents, who were buried there ; later 
 he obtains a scholarship at Westminster School, where Busby 
 is his head-master and Locke and South are his school-mates ; 
 he enters Trinity College, Cambridge, on a scholarship in 
 July, 1650 ; he writes a few elegies and commendatory poems 
 before entering Cambridge; in July, 1652, he is " discom- 
 muned," and is compelled to apologize to the vice-master for 
 contumacy, but is graduated B.A. in January, 1654 ; his 
 father dies in June, 1654, leaving to Dryden an estate worth 
 ^40 a year, after deducting his mother's life-interest; he 
 does not try for an advanced university degree, probably be- 
 cause of a lack of means ; his kinsmen sided with the people 
 against Charles I., and his cousin became chamberlain to 
 Cromwell and was one of Charles's judges ; Dryden is said 
 to have begun life as a clerk to this cousin ; upon Crom- 
 well's death, in September, 1658, Dryden writes his " Heroic 
 Stanzas," which are published in a volume with poems by 
 Waller and Sprat. 
 
 After the Restoration, Dryden takes lodgings with one 
 Herringman, a bookseller of the New Exchange, London, for 
 whom he is reported (doubtless incorrectly) to have been 
 hack-writer ; Herringman publishes Dryden's books till 1679, 
 when the poet meets Sir Robert Howard, who seems to have 
 aided him; on December i, 1663, Dryden is married to 
 
 131 
 
132 DRYDEN 
 
 Lady Elizabeth Howard, sister of his friend ; the lady had 
 been the subject of some scandals, and Dryden is said to have 
 been bullied into the marriage by her brothers ; her father 
 settles upon them a small estate in Wiltshire, but a difference 
 of prior social standing and apparent mutual infidelity make 
 the marriage an unhappy one, although both Dryden and his 
 wife were warmly attached to their children ; in November, 
 1662, Dryden is elected a member of the Royal Society, vhere 
 he associates with Bacon, Gilbert, Boyle, and Harvey j about 
 this time the opening of the King's Theatre and the Duke's 
 Theatre in London causes Dryden to begin play-writing; his 
 first acted play, "The Wild Gallant," was performed in Feb- 
 ruary, 1663, and failed ; during the same year his second play, 
 "The Wild Ladies," succeeded fairly, at the same theatre ; 
 Pepys records seeing Dryden in February, 1664, at Covent 
 Garden coffee-house, " with all the wits of the town ; " early 
 in 1665 a third play, "The Indian Emperor," is brought 
 out with marked success. 
 
 While the theatres are closed, from May, 1665, to De- 
 cember, 1666, because of the Plague and the great London 
 fire, Dryden retires to a seat of his father-in-law at Charlton 
 in Wiltshire, where his son is born ; during this retreat he 
 composes his " Annus Mirabilis" and his "Essay on Dra- 
 matic Poesy," defending the use of rhyme in the drama; 
 the " Essay " is published in March, 1667 ; Dryden 's fourth 
 drama, " Secret Love," is produced at the King's Theatre, and 
 Nell Gwyn is one of the persona ; during 1667 he also pro- 
 duces " Sir Martin Mar-all," one of his most successful plays; 
 about this time he makes a contract with the King's Theatre 
 company to provide them with three plays a year, in consid- 
 eration of receiving one-tenth of the profits of the theatre ; 
 he did not provide all the plays stipulated, but received as 
 high as ,400 a year, as his share of the profits, until the burn- 
 ing of the theatre in 1672 ; in 1669 he published an opera 
 called "The State of Innocence," founded, with Milton's 
 
DRYDEN 
 
 permission, on "Paradise Lost"; of his heroic tragedies, 
 " Tyrannic Love " appeared in 1669 and " Almanzar " and 
 " Almahide "in 1670 ; his " All for Love " is produced in 
 1672; in 1668 (at the King's request)- the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury confers upon Dryden the degree of M.A., and in 
 1670 he is made poet-laureate and historiographer, offices 
 which, combined, gave him a salary of ^200 a year, with a 
 butt of Canary wine ; his total annual income between 1670 
 and 1 68 1, from all sources, averaged from ^420 to ^577. 
 
 Between 1668 and 1681 he produced about fourteen plays ; 
 the comedies were most licentious, gave offence even then, and 
 have been deservedly lost ; in 1673 he produces " Amboyna," 
 a tragedy founded on the existing relation of the English 
 with the Dutch, and in 1681 another called "The Spanish 
 Friar," founded on the Popish plot; his last and finest 
 rhymed tragedy, " Aurengzebe," was produced in 1675, and is 
 said to have been read in manuscript and revised by Charles 
 II.; about this time Dryden proposes to write an epic poem, 
 and asks for a pension on that ground, admitting that he 
 " never felt himself very fit for tragedy ; " he receives a pen- 
 sion of ;ioo a year, but writes, instead of an epic, his finest 
 play, " All for Love ;" in 1679 he brings out an alteration of 
 " Troilus and Cressida," in which he pays further homage to 
 Shakespeare. 
 
 In 1671 his " heroic tragedies " are ridiculed in the famous 
 "Rehearsal," written by the Duke of Buckingham, Butler, 
 Sprat, and others; he has various literary controversies, and is 
 beaten by ruffians, hired by his enemies, in December, 1679 ; 
 the main cause was the attribution to Dryden of Mulgrave's 
 "Essay on Satire," written in 1675 and reflecting severely 
 upon the private life of prominent personages ; Dryden was 
 charged by various libellers with sympathy with Shaftesbury in 
 his opposition to the Court, and so, in November, 1681, he 
 demonstrated his loyalty to Charles II. by publishing the first 
 of his great satires, " Absalom and Achitophel ; " Tate de- 
 
134 DRYDEN 
 
 clares that the theme of the satire was suggested to Dryden by 
 Charles ; it obtained at once an enormous sale, and is still re- 
 garded as " the finest satire in our language for masculine in- 
 sight and for vigor of expression ; " his second great satire, 
 "The Medal/' appears in March, 1682 ; partisans of Shaftes- 
 bury reply in half a dozen satires upon Dryden, and he rejoins 
 with " Mac Flecknoe," published October 4, 1682, especially 
 directed against Shadwell, who had repudiated his former 
 friendship for Dryden, and had published " The Medal of 
 John Boyes [Dryden] ; " in November, 1682, appeared a sec- 
 ond part of " Absalom and Achitophel," in which two hun- 
 dred lines were written by Dryden and the rest by Nahum 
 Tate ; during the same month Dryden publishes his '* Religio 
 Laid " (a defence of the Anglican position) and " The Duke 
 of Guise," a satire, of which the greater part was written by 
 Nathaniel Lee; during 1682-84 he writes many prologues, 
 epilogues, and prefaces, and secures as much as three guineas 
 for each. 
 
 In 1684 he translates Maimbourg's " History of the 
 League," and in that and the following year publishes two 
 volumes of " Miscellaneous Poems," including contributions 
 from other writers; evidence taken from his private letters at 
 this time shows that he was in financial straits, and was writing 
 under the spur of poverty; in December, 1683, after an ap- 
 peal for aid to the Earl of Rochester, he is appointed collector 
 of customs in the port of London, an office which, through its 
 fees, somewhat relieved him financially; near the close of 
 Charles's life Dryden writes two operas, " Albion and Al- 
 banius " and " King Arthur," in honor of the King's politi- 
 cal successes ; the latter opera was produced in June, 1685, 
 after the accession of James ; Dryden's orifices and his pen- 
 sion of ;ioo are continued under James II.; in January, 
 1686, he is reported to have been seen, with his two sons and 
 Mrs. Nelly (mistress to the late King), "going to Mass; " 
 his conversion to Romanism at this time seems to have been 
 
DRYDEN 135 
 
 mainly from venal motives ; he seems, however, gradually to 
 have become a sincere adherent of the Catholic Church, and 
 soon begins to write in her favor ; he translates but does not 
 publish Vorillar's " History of Religious Revolutions," and is 
 employed by James to answer Stillingfleet, who had assailed 
 papers upon Catholicism written by James himself; in April, 
 1687, Dryden publishes " The Hind and the Panther," his 
 most famous work ; this poem was parodied by Prior and 
 others ; Dryden also translates a life of St. Francis Xavier and 
 writes "Britannia Rediviva" a congratulatory poem on the 
 birth of James's son, in June, 1688. 
 
 By the Revolution of 1688 Dryden loses all his offices, and 
 is succeeded as laureate by Shadwell ; he receives financial aid 
 from the Earl of Dorset, and returns to his former occupation 
 of play- writing ; " Don Sebastian," one of his best tragedies, 
 and his comedy " Amphitrion " are performed in 1690; in 
 1691 he brings out his opera "King Arthur," altered in its 
 politics to fit the times; in 1692 he produces " Cleomenes," 
 which was finished by Southerne, because of Dryden's illness ; 
 his last drama, " Love Triumphant," was produced in 1694, 
 but failed ; in 1698 Dryden is attacked, with other contem- 
 poraries, in the famous work of Jeremy Collier against the 
 theatre, and he acknowledges that Collier's strictures are in 
 part just ; meantime he had written, in honor of the Countess 
 of Abingdon, a stranger to Dryden, his elegiac poem " Eleo- 
 nora," probably from purely pecuniary motives; in 1693 he 
 publishes a translation of Juvenal and Persius and a new 
 volume of " Miscellanies; " about 1693 he begins his trans- 
 lation of Virgil, which is published by subscription in July, 
 1697; Pope declares that Dryden received ^1,200 for the 
 "Virgil ; " he also received presents from various noble pa- 
 trons, and offended his publisher, Tonson, by steadfastly re- 
 fusing to dedicate the " Virgil " to William III. ; in 1697 he 
 begins his " Fables," consisting of translations from Homer's 
 "Iliad," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Chaucer, and Boccaccio, 
 
136 DRYDEN 
 
 amounting to 12,000 verses when published in 1700; about 
 1697 he again appeals to the Government for aid, but says 
 that he " cannot buy favor by forsaking his religion ; " in 1697 
 he also writes for a London musical society his famous ode, 
 " Alexander's Feast ; " during his later years he spends most 
 of his time at Will's Coffee-house, surrounded by young wits 
 and worshipped as literary dictator ; early in 1 700 he writes an 
 additional scene for Fletcher's " Pilgrim," in preparation for 
 its performance as a benefit for Fletcher's son ; Dryden also 
 carries on a correspondence with "enthusiastic ladies," and 
 is courted by Congreve, Addison, and other prominent writ- 
 ers ; he dies in his house in Gerrard Street, London, May i, 
 1700. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON DRYDEN. 
 
 Gosse, E. , "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." London, 
 
 1889, Macmillan, 9-40. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Among My Books." Boston, 1872, Osgood, 1-70. 
 Johnson, S., "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets." London, 
 
 1854, John Murray, 269-391. 
 
 Masson, D., "English Poets." Cambridge, 1856, Macmillan, 88-139. 
 Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1874, 
 
 Holt, v. index. 
 Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1876, Bell, 
 
 91-112. 
 Macaulay, T. B., "Works." LondoTT7 > ^87i, Longman, Green & Co., 
 
 v. index. 
 Saintsbury, G., " English Men of Letters." London, 1881, Macmillan, 
 
 1-92. 
 Scott, Sir Walter, " Dryden, " with a biography. Edinburgh, 1882, 
 
 T. & A. Constable, 1-446. 
 Rossetti, Wm., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, E. Moxon, 
 
 92-107. 
 Mitford, J., " Life of Dryden." Boston, 1864, Little, Brown & Co., 
 
 1-146. 
 Browning, E. B., "The English Poets." London, 1863, Chapman & 
 
 Hall, 183-211. 
 
DRYDEN 137 
 
 Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge, 78-81. 
 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1870, Claxton, 267-297. 
 Craik, G. L., "English Literature." New York, 1869, Scribner, 115- 
 
 119. 
 Bell, E., "Life of Dryden." London, 1839, Longman, Green & Co., 
 
 1-69. 
 Skelton, J., "Essays in History and Biography." Edinburgh, 1883, 
 
 Black, 143-165. 
 Collier, W. F., "History of English Literature." London, 1892, 
 
 Nelson, 236-243. 
 
 Hallam, H., " Works." New York, 1859, Harper, v. index. 
 Masson, D., "Three Devils," etc. London, 1874, Macmillan, 153- 
 
 235- 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 47 : 1-36 (Macaulay) ; 13 : 116-135 (H. Hallam). 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 57: 133-158 and 503-528 (J. Wilson). 
 British Quarterly Review, 20 : 1-44 (D. Masson). 
 North American Review, 107 : 186-248 (J. R. Lowell). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Cold Intellectuality Lack of Emotion. 
 
 These manners of Dryden show that literature had become a 
 matter of study rather than inspiration, an employment for 
 the taste rather than for the enthusiasm, a source of distraction 
 rather than of emotion. His was a singularly solid and judi- 
 cious mind; an excellent reasoner, accustomed to discriminate 
 his ideas, armed with good, long-meditated proofs, strong in 
 discussion, asserting principles, establishing his sub-divisions, 
 citing authorities, drawing inferences. His style is well 
 moulded, exact, and simple, free from the affectations and 
 ornaments with which Pope afterwards burdened nis own. 
 He shows a mind constantly upright, bending rather from 
 conventionality tnan Irorn nature, with dash and afflatus, 
 occupied with grave thoughts, and subjecting his conduct to 
 his convictions. Pamphlets and dissertations in verse, satires, 
 letters, translations and imitations, this is the field on which 
 logical faculties and the art of writing find their best occupa- 
 
138 DRYDEN 
 
 tion. This is the true domain of Dryden and of classical 
 reason. He develops, defines, concludes ; he declares his 
 thought, then takes it up again, that his reader may receive it 
 prepared, and, having received it, may retain it. Dryden is 
 the most classical of all the English poets. The poetic genius 
 of this man was preeminently robust and unromantic."- 
 Taine. 
 
 "He is best upon a level table-land ; it is true, a very 
 high level, but still somewhere between the loftier peaks of 
 inspiration and the plain of every-day life. ... He was 
 a strong thinker, who sometimes carried common-sense to a 
 height where it catches the light of a diviner air, and warmed 
 reason till it had well-nigh the illuminating property of intui- 
 tion. He blows the mind clear. In ripeness of mind and 
 bluff heartiness of expression he takes rank with the best." 
 Lowell. 
 
 " There is no fine power of dramatic story, no exquisite 
 invention of character or circumstance, no truth to nature in 
 ideal landscape : at the utmost, there is conventional dra- 
 matic situation, with an occasional flash of splendid imagery 
 such as may be struck out in the heat of heroic declamation." 
 David Masson. 
 
 " Nay, but he was a poet, an excellent poet in marble ; 
 and Phidias, with the sculpturesque ideal separated from his 
 working tool, might have carved him. He was a poet with- 
 out passion. ... He thrust out nature with a fork. 
 To be sure it was not necessary that John Dryden 
 should keep a Bolingbroke to think for him : but to be sure 
 again, it is something to be born with a heart, particularly 
 for* a poet." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " He is, with all his variety of excellence, not often pa- 
 thetic ; and had so little sensibility of effusions purely natural 
 that he did not esteem them in others ; simplicity gave him 
 no pleasure." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 "Almost the only feature of the future Dryden which this 
 
DRYDEN 139 
 
 production [' Lines on the Death of Lord Hastings '] dis- 
 closes is his deficiency in sensibility or heart ; exciting as the 
 occasion was, it does not contain an affecting line. 
 Without either creative imagination or any power of pathos, 
 he is in argument, in satire, and in declamatory magnificence, 
 the greatest of our poets." G. L. Craik. 
 
 " He was a more vigorous thinker, a more correct and log- 
 ical declaimer, and had more of what may be called strength 
 of mind than Pope." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " His imagination was torpid until it was awakened by his 
 judgment. ... He sat down to work himself, by reflection 
 and argument, into a deliberate wildness, a rational frenzy. 
 No man exercised so much influence on the age. He was 
 perhaps the greatest of those whom we have designated as the 
 critical poets ; and his literary career exhibited, on a reduced 
 scale, the whole history of the school to which he belonged. 
 His command of language was immense. With him 
 died the secret of the old poetical diction of England, the 
 art of producing rich effects by familiar words. . . . His 
 critical works are, beyond all comparison, superior to any 
 which had, till then, appeared in England. ... He began 
 with quaint parallels and empty mouthing. He gradually ac- 
 quired the energy of the satirist, the gravity of the moralist, 
 the rapture of the lyric poet. He was utterly destitute of 
 the power of exhibiting real human beings." Macaulay. 
 
 " In literary criticism Dryden was himself the greatest 
 authority of the period, and for many years it was in this 
 form that he at once exercised himself and educated his age 
 in the matter of prose writing." George Saintsbury. 
 
 " His excellencies were those of the intellect and not of 
 the spirit. Dryden 's poetry ~. '. ~. is of the very higEest 
 kind in its class. Wherever the pure intellect comes into 
 play, there he is invariably excellent." T. R. Lounsbury. 
 
I4O DRYDEN 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The Deist thinks he stands on firmer ground ; 
 Cries ' Eureka ' the mighty secret's found : 
 God is that spring of good, supreme and blest ; 
 We, made to serve, and in that service blest ; 
 If so, some rules of worship must be given, 
 Distributed to all alike by Heaven ; 
 Else God were partial and to some denied 
 The means His justice should for all provide." 
 
 Religio Laid. 
 
 11 Yet 'tis our duty and our interest too, 
 Such monuments as we can build to raise ; 
 Lest all the world prevent what we should do, 
 And claim a title in him by their praise. 
 
 How shall I then begin or how conclude, 
 To draw a fame so truly circular ? 
 For in a round what order can be show'd, 
 Where all the parts so equal perfect are ? " 
 
 Stanzas on the Death of Oliver Cromwell. 
 
 " Farewell, too little and too lately known, 
 Whom I began to think and call my own : 
 For sure our souls were near allied, and thine 
 Cast in the same poetic mould with mine, 
 One common note on either lyre did strike 
 And knaves and fools we both abhorred alike." 
 Lines to the Memory of His Friend, Mr. Oldham. 
 
 Cool, Biting Satire. "The prodigality of irony, 
 "the sting in the tail of every couplet, the ingenuity with 
 which the odious charges are made against the victim, and 
 above all the polish of the language and the verse and the 
 tone of half-condescending banter, were things of which that 
 time had had no experience. . . . There had been a con- 
 tinuous tradition among satirists that they must affect im- 
 mense moral indignation at the evils they attacked. . 
 
DRYDEN 141 
 
 Now this moral indignation, apt to become rather tiresome 
 when the subject is purely ethical, becomes quite intolerable 
 when the subject is political. It never does for the political 
 satirist to lose his temper and to rave and rant and denounce 
 with the air of an inspired prophet. Dryden, and perhaps 
 Dryden alone, has observed this rule. . . . His manner 
 toward this subject is that of a cool, but not ill-humored scorn. 
 His verse strides along with a careless Olympian 
 motion, as if the writer were looking at his victims with a kind 
 of good-humored scorn rather than with any elaborate triumph. 
 . . . Not only is there nothing better than Dryden's 
 satirical and didactic poems of their own kind in English, but 
 it may almost be said that there is nothing better in any 
 other literary language. . . . There never was, perhaps, a 
 satirist who less abused his power, for personal ends. The 
 satire was as bitter as Butler's, but less grotesque and less 
 labored. ' ' George Saintsbury. 
 
 " His greatest power . . . was in satire satire into 
 which he formed his whole temperament, even more than 
 the brilliancy of his mind, and which represents chiefly vehe- 
 ment invective, as distinct from the sting and scintillation 
 of the epigram and lampoon." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " That coolness of irony, that polished banter, which gave 
 to Dryden his extraordinary influence as a satirist. It is as a 
 satirist and pleader in verse that Dryden is best known, and 
 as both he is in some respects unrivalled. His satire is not so 
 sly as Chaucer's, but it is distinguished by the same good- 
 nature. There is no malice in it." Lowell. 
 
 "The lofty and impassioned satire of Dryden, uniting the 
 vehemence of anger with the self-control of conscious deter- 
 mination, presents the finest example of that sort of voluntary 
 emotion." Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 . " His vein of satire was keen, terse, and powerful beyond any 
 that has since been displayed. . . . The satirical powers 
 of Dryden were of the highest order. . . . The models of 
 
142 DRYDEN 
 
 satire afforded by Dryden, as they have never been equalled 
 by any succeeding poet, were in a tone of excellence superior 
 far to all that had preceded them. ... He draws his 
 arrow to the head and dismisses it straight upon the object of 
 aim." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 "As a satirist he has rivalled Juvenal. His 'Absalom and 
 Achitophel' is the greatest satire of modern times. There 
 is a magnanimity of abuse in some of these epithets [in 
 * Absalom and Achitophel'], a fearless choice of topics, of 
 invective, which may be considered as the heroical in satire." 
 William Hazlitt, 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Let him be gallows-free by my consent, 
 And nothing suffer, since he nothing meant ; 
 Hanging supposes human soul and reason ; 
 This animal's below committing treason. 
 Shall he be hanged who never could rebel ? 
 That's a preferment to Achitophel. 
 
 Railing in other men may be a crime, 
 But ought to pass for mere instinct in him : 
 Instinct he follows, and no further knows, 
 For to write verse with him is to transpose." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 " All human things are subject to decay, 
 
 And when fate summons, monarchs must obey, 
 This Flecknoe found, who, like Augustus, young 
 Was calPd to empire, and had govern'd long ; 
 In prose and verse, was own'd, without dispute, 
 Through all the realms of Nonsense, absolute ; 
 Worn out with business, did at length debate 
 To settle the succession of the state ; 
 And, pondering, which of all his sons was fit 
 To reign, and wage immortal war with wit, 
 Cried, ' 'Tis resolved : for nature pleads that he 
 Should only rule who most resembles me. 
 
DRYDEN 143 
 
 Shadwell alone my perfect image bears, 
 Mature in dulness from his early years : 
 Shadwell alone, of all my sons, is he, 
 Who stands confirm'd in full stupidity. 
 The rest to some faint meaning make pretence, 
 But Shadwell never deviates into sense. 
 Some beams of wit on other souls may fall, 
 Strike through, and make a lucid interval ; 
 But Shadwell's genuine night admits no ray.' " 
 
 Mac Flecknoe. 
 
 " Power was his aim ; but, thrown from that pretence, 
 The wretch turn'd loyal in his own defence ; 
 And malice reconciled him to his prince. 
 Him in the anguish of his soul he served, 
 Rewarded faster still than he deserved. 
 Behold him now exalted into trust, 
 His counsel's oft convenient, seldom just : 
 Even in the most sincere advice he gave, 
 He had a grudging still to be a knave. 
 The frauds he learn'd in his fanatic years 
 Make him uneasy in his lawful gears : 
 At best as little honest as he could, 
 And, like white witches, mischievously good." 
 
 The Medal. 
 
 3. Metrical Skill. "Whatever subjects employed his 
 pen, he was still improving our measures and embellishing our 
 language. Of Dryden's poems it was said by Pope that he 
 could select from them better specimens of every mode of 
 poetry than any other English writer could supply. Perhaps 
 no nation ever produced a writer thaFenriched his language 
 with such a variety of models. To him we owe the im- 
 provement, perhaps the completion of our metre. " Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
 " His versification flowed so easily as to lessen the bad ef- 
 fects of rhyme in dialogue. ... He had powers of versi- 
 fication superior to those possessed by any other English 
 
144 DRYDEN 
 
 author. . . . He first showed that the English language 
 was capable of uniting smoothness and strength. He knew 
 how to choose the flowing and sonorous words ; to vary the 
 pauses and adjust the accents ; to diversify the cadence and 
 yet preserve the smoothness of the metre. In lyrical poetry, 
 Dry den must be allowed to have no equal. ' Alexander's 
 Feast ' is sufficient to show his supremacy in that brilliant 
 department." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " What is of greatest importance to poetical students is to 
 observe vvhat progress Dryden made in the new prosody and 
 how, by means of it, he drew out those qualities which had 
 been too much neglected in the verse of the previous age 
 ease, intelligibility, and flexibility. . . . His fluency, 
 his sustained power, the cogency and the lucidity of his logic, 
 polished the surface of didactic and narrative poetry, which, 
 until he came, had been rocky and irregular. Dryden's com- 
 mand over versification is shown in the prologues and epi- 
 logues which he produced not merely for his own plays but for 
 those of others. . . . Dryden was greatly Pope's su- 
 perior as a craftsman in verse. Pope excelled only in the 
 couplet, whereas Dryden was master of blank-verse also and 
 of a greater variety of lyrical measure than is generally sup- 
 posed. He attained full mastery over the balance of the 
 iambic verse, so that the poeTcoulil rule the linejind not the 
 line carry him whither it would. He purified the national 
 style to a very marked extent, freed it of uncouth and super- 
 fluous ornament, and drew the parts of the language into 
 harmonious relations with one another." Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " It was in declamatory and didactic rhyme, with all that 
 could consist with it, that Dryden excelled. It was in the 
 metrical utterance of weighty sentences, in the metrical con- 
 duct of an argument, in vehement satirical invective, and in 
 such passages of lyric passion as depend for their effect on 
 rolling grandeur of sound, that he was prominently great." 
 David Masson. 
 
DRYDEN 145 
 
 " Though contracted by habits of classical argument, 
 though stiffened by controversy and polemics, though unable 
 to create souls or depict artless and delicate sentiments, he 
 is a genuine poet. He lived among great men and court- 
 iers, in a society of artificial manners and measured language, 
 but under his regular versification the artist's soul is brought to 
 light." Tame. 
 
 " The varying verse, the full resounding line, 
 The long majestic march and energy divine." Pope. 
 
 " In Dryden, the rhyme waits upon the thought. He 
 knew how to give new modulation, sweetness, and force to 
 pentameter. ' ' Lowell. 
 
 11 In the management of the heroic couplet Dryden has 
 never been equalled. His versification sinks and swells in 
 happy unison with the subject ['Absalom and Achitophel'] ; 
 and his wealth of language seems to be unlimited. As a didac- 
 tic poet he perhaps might, with care and meditation, have 
 rivalled Lucretius. Of lyric poets he is the most brilliant 
 and spirit-stirring. He is certainly the best writer of heroic 
 rhyme in our language. The toughest and most knotted parts 
 of the language became ductile at his touch. His versifica- 
 tion, . . . while it gave the first model of that neatness. 
 and_precision which the following generation esteemed so 
 highly, exhibited, at the same time, the last example of noble- 
 ness, freedom, variety of pause, and cadence." Macautiy. 
 
 " We shall hardly find one of the practitioners of the coup- 
 let who is capable of such masterly treatment of the form, of 
 giving to the phrase at once a turn so clear and so individual, 
 of weighting the verse with such dignity and at the same time 
 winging it with such a light-flying speed. . . . The 
 versification of English satire before Dryden had been, al- 
 most without exception, harsh and rugged. . . . But 
 Dryden was in no such case. His native gifts and his 
 enormous practice in play-writing had made the couplet as 
 natural a vehicle to him for any form of discourse as blank 
 10 
 
146 DRYDEN 
 
 verse or plain prose. The form of it, too, which he had most 
 affected was especially suited for satire. In versification the 
 great achievement of Dryden was the alteration of what may 
 be called the balance of the line, causing it to -run more 
 quickly and to strike its rhymes with a sharper and less pro- 
 longed sound." George Saintsbury. 
 
 " The abounding sweep and resilient strength of his versi- 
 fication form another of his prime excellencies, and he may 
 almost be said to have remoulded the English heroic measure, 
 puffing it out to excess, it should be admitted, with triple 
 rhymes and rolling Alexandrines. ( Glorious John,' the mas- 
 ter of the full-sounding line." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " He perfected by degrees his mastery of heroic verse, of 
 which later he was to display the capabilities in a way that 
 had never previously been seen and has never since been sur- 
 passed. He imparted to the line [heroic verse] a variety, 
 vigjw^and sustained majesty of movement such as the verse in 
 its' modern form had never previously received.";/. J?. 
 Lounsbury. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The soft complaining flute 
 In dying notes discovers 
 The woes of hopeless lovers, 
 Whose dirge is whispered by the warbling lute. 
 
 Sharp violins proclaim 
 Their jealous pangs and desperation, 
 Fury, frantic indignation, 
 Depth of pains and heights of passion, 
 For the fair, disdainful dame. 
 But, oh ! what art can teach, 
 What human voice can reach, 
 The sacred organ's praise ? 
 Notes inspiring holy love, 
 Notes that wing their heavenly ways 
 To mend the choirs above." 
 
 A Song for St. Cecilia's Day. 
 
DRYDEN 147 
 
 The praise of Bacchus then the sweet musician sung, 
 Of Bacchus ever fair and ever young : 
 The jolly god in triumph comes ; 
 Sound the trumpets ; beat the drums : 
 Flush'd with a purple grace 
 He shows his honest face : 
 
 Now give the hautboys breath. He comes ! he comes ! 
 Bacchus ever fair and young, 
 
 Drinking joys did first ordain ; 
 Bacchus, blessings are a treasure, 
 Drinking is the soldier's pleasure : 
 Rich the treasure, 
 Sweet the pleasure, 
 Sweet is pleasure after pain." Alexander's Feast. 
 
 " High state and honours to others impart, 
 But give me your heart : 
 That treasure, treasure alone, 
 I beg for my own. 
 So gentle a love, so fervent a fire, 
 My soul does inspire ; 
 That treasure, that treasure alone 
 I beg for my own. 
 
 Your love let me crave ; 
 
 Give me in possessing 
 
 So matchless a blessing ; 
 That empire is all I would have. 
 
 Love's my petition, 
 
 All my ambition ; 
 
 If e'er you discover 
 
 So faithful a lover, 
 
 So real a flame, 
 
 I'll die, I'll die, 
 
 So give up my game." The May Queen. 
 
 4. Bold Personal Portraiture. " Dryden made his 
 'poem [' Absalom and Achitophel '] little more than a string 
 of such portraits, connected together by the very slenderest 
 cord of narrative. . . . The strong antithesis [of his 
 
148 DRYDEN 
 
 form] and smart telling hits lent themselves to personal de- 
 scriptions and attack with consummate ease. . . . His 
 figures are always at once types and individuals. It is to be 
 noticed that, in drawing these satirical portraits, the poet has 
 exercised a singular judgment in selecting his traits." George 
 Saintsbury. 
 
 " Now and then, indeed, he seizes a very coarse and marked 
 distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but a strong carica- 
 ture, in which a single peculiarity is protruded and every- 
 thing else is neglected ; like the Marquis of Granby at an 
 inn-door, whom we know by nothing but his baldness ; or 
 Wilkes, who is Wilkes only in his squint." Macaulay. 
 
 " The poem [< Absalom and Achitophel '] really consists of 
 a set of satirical portraits, cut and polished like jewels and 
 flashing malignant light from all their facets. . . . All 
 these [sketches] were drawn at full length with a precision 
 never approached by any of the popular character-makers ' 
 of the preceding century, and in verse the like of which had 
 never been heard in English for vigorous alternation of thrust 
 and parry. ' ' Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " Instead of unmeaning caricatures, he presents portraits 
 which cannot be mistaken, however unfavorable ideas they 
 may convey of the originals." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " His portraits of the English dramatists are wrought with 
 great spirit and diligence. The account of Shakespeare may 
 stand as a perpetual model of encomiastic criticism ; exact 
 without minuteness and lofty without exaggeration. . . . 
 In a few lines is exhibited a character so extensive in its com- 
 prehension and so curious in its limitations that nothing can 
 be added, diminished, or referred." James Mitford. 
 
 " The thing is to strike the nail on the head and hard, not 
 gracefully. The public must recognize the character, shout 
 their names as they recognize the portraits [in ' Absalom and 
 Achitophel '], applaud the attacks which are made upon them, 
 hurl them from the high rank which they covet." Taine. 
 
DRYDEN 
 
 149 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Now stop your noses, readers, all and some, 
 For here's a tun of midnight work to come, 
 Og [Shadwell], from a treason tavern rolling home ; 
 Round as a globe and liquored every chink, 
 Goodly and great, he sails behind his link. 
 With all this bulk, there's nothing lost in Og, 
 For every inch that is not fool is rogue : 
 A monstrous mass of foul, corrupted matter, 
 As all the devils had spewed to make the batter." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 "A martial hero first, with early care, 
 
 Blown, like the pigmy, by the wind to war. 
 
 A beardless chief, a rebel ere a man : 
 
 So young his hatred to his prince began. 
 
 Next this (how wildly will ambition steer !) 
 
 A vermin wriggling in the Usurper's ear, 
 
 Bantering his venal wit for sums of gold, 
 
 He cast himself into the saint-like mould, 
 
 Groan'd, sigh'd, and pray'd, while godliness was gain, 
 
 The loudest bagpipe of the squeaking train." The Medal. 
 
 " Sir Fopling is a fool so nicely writ 
 
 The ladies would mistake him for a wit ; 
 
 And, when he sings, talks loud, and cocks would cry, 
 
 I vow, methinbs, he's pretty company : 
 
 So brisk, so gay, so travell'd, so refined, 
 
 As he took pains to graff upon his kind. 
 
 True fops help nature's work, and go to school, 
 
 To file and finish God Almighty's fool. 
 
 Yet none Sir Fopling him or him can call ; 
 
 He's knight o' the shire, and represents ye all. 
 
 From each he meets he culls what'er he can ; 
 
 Legion's his name, a people in a man." 
 
 Sir Fopling Flutter. 
 
 5. Masculine Vigor Incisiveness Directness. 
 
 He is the strongest poet of the age of prose, the most vig- 
 
DRYDEN 
 
 orous verse-man between Milton and Wordsworth. We may 
 say that the muse of Dryden has a contralto and that of Pope 
 a soprano voice." Edmund Gosse. 
 
 "There are passages in Dryden's satire in which every 
 couplet has not only the force but the actual sound of a slap 
 in the face. . . . Dryden had a great deal to say, and 
 said it in the plain straightforward fashion which was of all 
 things most likely to be useful for the formation of a work- 
 manlike prose style in English. . . . His political and 
 dramatic practice and the studies which that practice implied 
 provided him with an ample vocabulary, a strong terse method 
 of expression, and a dislike to archaism, vulgarity, or want of 
 clearness . " George Saintsbury. 
 
 " His words invariably go straight to the mark and not un- 
 frequently with a directness and a force that fully merit the 
 epithet of ' burning ' applied to them by the poet Gray. . . . 
 Dryden, who thought clearly and wrote forcibly, who knew 
 always what he had to say and then said it with a directness 
 and a power. ... So long as men continue to delight 
 in vividness of expression, in majesty of numbers, and in mas- 
 culine strength and all-abounding vigor, so long will Dryden 
 continue to hold his present high place among English au- 
 thors." 7 1 . R. Lounsbury. 
 
 " The occasional poetry of Dryden is marked strongly by 
 masculine character. . . . The vigor and rapidity with 
 which Dryden poured forth his animated satire plainly inti- 
 mates that his mind was pleased with the exercise of that for- 
 midable power. It was more easy for him to write with sever- 
 ity than with forbearance." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " He writes boldly under the pressure of vehement ideas ; 
 
 he writes stirring airs, which shake all the senses, 
 
 even if they do not sink deep into the heart. Such is his 
 
 ' Alexander's Feast,' ... an admirable trumpet-blast, 
 
 a masterpiece of rapture and of art, which Victor 
 
 Hugo alone has come up to." Tame. 
 
DRYDEN 151 
 
 " Robustness is the great characteristic of Dryden's poetry ; 
 he is often excessive, but it is the excess of faculty not of en- 
 deavor. Whatever he does is done with solidity and superior- 
 ity ; he dominates his subject and his reader, and effects this by 
 the direct, unlabored expression of himself." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " He is rather an energetic than a feeling writer. He has very 
 little heart and a great deal of nerve." Hartley Coleridge. 
 
 " He was thoroughly manly." Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But thou [Shaftesbury] , the pander of the people's hearts, 
 O crooked soul, and serpentine in arts, 
 
 What curses on thy blasted name will fall ! 
 
 Which age to age their legacy shall call : 
 
 For all must curse the woes that must descend on all. 
 
 Religion thou hast none : thy mercury 
 
 Has passed through every sect, and theirs through thee. 
 
 But what thou giv'st, that venom still remains, 
 
 And the poxed nation feel thee in their brains." 
 
 A Satire against Sedition. 
 
 " Without a vision poets can foreshow 
 
 What all but fools by common-sense may know : 
 If true succession from our isle should fail, 
 And crowds profane with impious arm prevail, 
 Not thou, nor those thy factious arts engage, 
 Shall reap that harvest of rebellious rage, 
 With which thou flatterest thy decrepit age. 
 The swelling poison of the several sects 
 Which, wanting vent, the nation's health infects, 
 Shall burst its bag ; and, fighting out their way, 
 The various venoms on each other prey. 
 The presbyter, pufFd up with spiritual pride, 
 Shall on the necks of the lewd nobles ride : 
 His brethren damn, the civil power defy, 
 And parcel out republic prelacy." 
 
 A Satire against Sedition. 
 
52 DRYDEN 
 
 " Protect us, mighty Providence, 
 What would these madmen have ? 
 First, they would bribe us without pence, 
 Deceive us without common-sense, 
 And without power enslave. 
 Shall free-born men, in humble awe, 
 Submit to servile shame ; 
 Who from consent and custom draw 
 The same right to be ruled by law, 
 Which kings pretend to reign ? " 
 
 On the Young Statesman. 
 
 6. Point. " He has antithesis, ornamental epithets, 
 finely wrought comparisons, and all the artifices of the liter- 
 ary mind. . . . He contrasts ideas with ideas, phrases 
 with phrases. . . . Closer ideas, more marked contrasts, 
 bolder images, only add weight to the argument. 
 He has vigorous periods, reflective antithesis." Taine. 
 
 " The flippant extravagance of point and quibble in which, 
 complying with his age, he had hitherto indulged." Sir 
 Walter Scott. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " From hence began that plot, the nation's curse, 
 Bad in itself, but represented worse ; 
 Raised in extremes and in extremes decried ; 
 With oaths affirm'd, with dying vows denied ; 
 Not weigh'd nor winnow'd by the multitude ; 
 But swallow'd in the mass, unchew'd and crude. 
 Some truth there was, but dash'd and brevv'd with lies, 
 To please the fools and puzzle all the wise. 
 Succeeding times did equal folly call, 
 Believing nothing or believing all." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 " Unblamed for life, ambition set aside, 
 
 Not stain'd with cruelty, not pufPd with pride. 
 
 How happy had he been if destiny 
 
 Had higher placed his birth or not so high ! 
 
DRYDEN 153 
 
 His kingly virtues might have gain'd a throne, 
 And bless'd all other countries but his own. 
 But charming greatness, since so few refuse 
 'Tis juster to lament him than accuse." 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 * ' Thine be the laurel then ; thy blooming age 
 Can best, if any can, support the stage ; 
 Which so declines that shortly we may see 
 Players and plays reduced to second infancy. 
 Sharp to the world but thoughtless of renown, 
 They plot not on the stage but on the town, 
 And, in despair their empty pit to fill, 
 Set up some foreign monster in a bill. 
 Thus they jog on, still tricking, never thriving, 
 And murdering plays, which they miscall reviving." 
 
 Epistle to Mr. Granvilk. 
 
 7. Specious Argument in Verse. " Dryden had a 
 faculty of specious argument in verse which, if it falls short of 
 the great Roman's [Lucretius] in logical exactitude, hardly 
 falls short of it in poetical ornament, and excels it in a sort of 
 triumphant vivacity which hurries the reader along whether he 
 will or no. ... Dryden's didactic poems are quite un- 
 like anything which came before them, and have never been 
 approached by anything that has come after them. Doubtless 
 they prove nothing ; . . . but at the same time they have 
 a remarkable air of proving something. He was at all times 
 singularly happy and fertile in the art of illustration and of 
 concealing the weakness of an argument in the most convinc- 
 ing way by a happy smile or jest. A poet whose greatest tri- 
 umphs were won in the fields of satire and of argumentative 
 verse, Dryden had, in reality, a considerable touch of the 
 scholastic in his mind." Geerge Saintsbury. 
 
 "If he took up an opinion in the morning, he would have 
 found so many arguments for it by night that it would seem 
 already old and familiar. . . . But the charm of this great 
 advocate is that, whatever side he was on, he could always find 
 
154 DRYDEN 
 
 reasons for it and state them with great force and with abun- 
 dance of happy illustration. . . . It is Dryden's excuse 
 that his characteristic excellence is to argue persuasively and 
 powerfully, whether in verse or in prose, and that he was 
 amply endowed with the most needful quality of an advocate 
 to be strongly and wholly of his present way of thinking, 
 whatever it might be. ... One of the great charms of 
 his best writing is that everything seems struck off at a heat, 
 as by a superior man in the best mood of his talk." Lowell. 
 
 " The distinguishing characteristic of Dryden's genius seems 
 to have been the power of reasoning and expressing the result 
 in appropriate language. . . . The skill with which they 
 [his arguments] are stated, elucidated, enforced, and exem- 
 plified ever commands our admiration, though in the result 
 our reason may reject their influence. . . . His argu- 
 ments, even in the worst cause, bear witness to the energy of 
 his mental conceptions." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse. . . . 
 His logic is by no means uniformly sound. . . . His 
 arguments, therefore, often are worthless, but the manner in 
 which they are stated is beyond all praise." Macaulay. 
 
 "He could not restrain himself from argument and satire 
 on a subject that would have induced most youthful poets to 
 luxuriate in elegiac complaints." -James Mitford. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " If, then, our faith we for our guide admit, 
 Vain is the further search of human wit, 
 As when the building gains a surer stay, 
 We take the unuseful scaffolding away. 
 Reason by sense no more can understand ; 
 The game is played into another hand ; 
 Why choose we then, like bilanders, to creep 
 Along the coast, and land in view to keep, 
 When safely we may launch into the deep ? " 
 
 The Hind and the Panther. 
 
DRYDEN 155 
 
 " For granting we have sinn'd, and that the offence 
 Of man is made against Omnipotence, 
 Some price that bears proportion must be paid, 
 And infinite with infinite be weigh'd. . 
 See, then, the Deist lost : remorse for vice 
 Not paid, or paid inadequate to price : 
 What farther means can Reason now direct, 
 Or what relief from human wit expect ? 
 That shows us sick ; and sadly are we sure 
 Still to be sick, till Heaven reveal the cure : 
 If then Heaven's will must needs be understood, 
 (Which must, if we want cure, and Heaven be good), 
 Let all records of will revealed be shown ; 
 With Scripture all in equal balance thrown, 
 And our one sacred book will be that one." 
 
 Religio Laid. 
 
 " If those who gave the sceptre could not tie 
 By their own deed their own posterity, 
 How then could Adam bind his future race ? 
 How could his forfeit on mankind take place ? 
 Or how could heavenly justice damn us all, 
 Who ne'er consented to our father's fall? 
 Then kings are slaves to those whom they command, 
 And tenants to their people's pleasure stand. 
 Add, that the power for property allovv'd 
 Is mischievously seated in the crowd ; 
 For who can be secure of private right, 
 If sovereign sway may be dissolved by might ? " 
 
 Absalom and Achitophel. 
 
 8. Excessive Panegyric Adulation Bombast. 
 
 " He had a tendency to bombast, which, though subsequently 
 corrected by time and thought, was never wholly removed. 
 No writer, it must be owned, has carried the flattery of dedi- 
 cation to a greater length. . . . But this was not, we 
 suspect, merely interested servility : it was the overflowing of 
 a mind singularly disposed to admiration of a mind which 
 diminished vices and magnified virtues and obligations. 
 
1 56 DRYDEN 
 
 Bombast is his prevailing vice the exaggeration which dis- 
 figures the panegyrics of Dryden." Macaulay. 
 
 " He seems to have made flattery too cheap. ... He 
 appears never to have impoverished his mint of flattery by his 
 expense, however lavish. . . . The extreme flattery of 
 Dryden's dedications has been objected to as a fault of an op- 
 posite description ; and perhaps no writer has equalled him in 
 the profusion and elegance of his adulation. . . . He 
 considers the great as entitled to encomiastic homage, and 
 brings praise rather as a tribute than a gift. ... In the 
 meanness and servility of hyperbolical adulation, I know not 
 whether, since the days in which the Roman emperors were 
 deified, he has ever been equalled, except by Afra Behn in an 
 address to Eleanor Gwyn." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " Dryden was one of the most accomplished flatterers that 
 ever lived." George Saints bury. 
 
 " Although it ['Tyrannic Love '] is perhaps his best heroic 
 play, it errs on the side of rant and bombast to such a degree 
 that the poet felt obliged to apologize for this in the pro- 
 logue. Edmund Gosse. 
 
 "Here lovers vie with each other in metaphors; there a 
 lover, in order to magnify the beauty of his mistress, says that 
 bloody hearts lie panting in her hands." Tame. 
 
 11 Perhaps no writer has equalled him in the profusion and 
 elegance of his adulation." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Next to the sacred temple you are led, 
 
 Where waits a crown for your most sacred head : 
 How justly from the Church that crown is due, 
 Preserved from ruin, and restored by you ! 
 The grateful choir their harmony employ, 
 Not to make greater but more solemn joy. 
 Wrapt soft and warm, your name is sent on high, 
 As flames do on the wings of insects fly : 
 
DRYDEN 157 
 
 Music herself is lost ; in vain she brings 
 Her choicest notes to praise the best of kings : 
 Her melting strains in you a tomb have found, 
 And lie like bees in their own sweetness drown'd. 
 He that brought peace, all discord could atone, 
 His name is music of itself alone." 
 
 To Charles the Second. 
 
 When factious rage to cruel exile drove 
 The queen of beauty and the court of love, 
 The muses drooped with their forsaken arts, 
 And the sad cupids broke their useless darts : 
 
 But now the illustrious nymph, returned again, 
 Brings every grace triumphant in her train. 
 The wond'ring Nereids, though they raised no storm, 
 Foreslovv'd her passage, to behold her form : 
 Some cried, ' A Venus ! ' some, ' A Thetis pass'd ! ' 
 But this was not so fair nor that so chaste." 
 
 To the Duchess of York on Her Return. 
 
 11 Nature gave him, a child, what men in vain 
 Oft strive, by art though further'd, to obtain. 
 His body was an orb, his sublime soul 
 Did move on virtue's and on learning's pole : 
 Whose regular motions better to our view, 
 Than Archimedes' sphere, the heavens did shew. 
 Graces and virtues, languages and arts, 
 Beauty and learning fill'd up all the parts. 
 Heaven's gifts, which do like falling stars appear 
 Scatter'd in others ; all, as in their sphere. 
 Were fix'd conglobate in his soul ; and thence 
 Shone through his body, with sweet influence ; 
 Letting their glories so on each one fall, 
 The whole frame rendered was celestial." 
 
 The Death of Lord Hastings. 
 
 9. Coarseness Sensuality. Dryden has been uni- 
 versally condemned for pandering to the depraved tastes of 
 
158 DRYDEN 
 
 the age and court. While his later and better work is less 
 open to the charge of coarseness, yet some of it, like the 
 second part of " Absalom and Achitophel," contains, as 
 Saintsbury says, "some of his greatest licenses of expres- 
 sion." 
 
 " The license of his comedy . . . had for it only 
 the apology of universal example, and must be lamented 
 though not excused. . . . Dryden's indelicacy is like 
 the forced impudence of a bashful man." Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 " The characters in Dryden's plays are nothing but gross, 
 selfish, unblushing, lying libertines of both sexes. 
 The comic characters are, without mixture, loathsome and 
 despicable. ' ' Macaulay. 
 
 " He squatted clumsily in the filth in which others simply 
 sported. . . . He made himself petulant of set purpose. 
 Nothing is more nauseous than studied lewdness, and Dryden 
 studied everything, even pleasantness and politeness."- 
 Taine. 
 
 " His works afford too many examples of dissolute licen- 
 tiousness and abject adulation ; but they were probably like 
 his merriment, artificial and constrained the effects of study 
 and meditation, and his trade rather than his pleasure. Of 
 the mind that can trade in corruption, and can deliberately 
 pollute itself with ideal wickedness for the sake of spreading 
 the contagion in society, I wish not to conceal nor excuse the 
 depravity. Such degradation of genius, such abuse of super 
 lative abilities, cannot be contemplated but with grief and in- 
 dignation. ' ' Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " The coarseness of Dryden's plays is unpardonable. 
 . . . It is deliberate, it is unnecessary, it is a positive 
 defect in art." George Saintsbury. 
 
 11 Dryden's satire is often coarse, but where it is coarsest 
 it is commonly in defence of himself against attacks that were 
 themselves brutal," Lowell. 
 

 DRYDEN 159 
 
 Those who care to seek illustrations of Dry den's coarseness 
 will find striking instances in his "Absalom and Achitophel," 
 Book I., lines i to 10, and Book II., lines 467 to 480, in his 
 " Epistle to Mr. Southern," and in his extant plays. 
 
 10. Pedantry Vanity. If Dryden mostly wanted that 
 inspiration which comes of belief in and devotion to some- 
 thing nobler and more abiding than the present moment and 
 its petulant need, he had at least the next best thing to that 
 a thorough faith in himself. . . . He is always hand- 
 somely frank in telling us whatever of his own doing pleased 
 him." Lowell. 
 
 " He never forgets that, as Matthew Arnold has said, he 
 is the puissant and glorious founder of our excellent and indis- 
 pensable eighteenth century that is to say, of an age of 
 prose and reason." Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " Certainly ' modest ' and ' diffident ' are not exactly the 
 adjectives for those qualities which one discerns as uppermost 
 in the writings, verse and prose, of 'Glorious John,' the master 
 of the ' full-resounding ' line. . . . There is a great deal 
 of self-assertion and an overbearing contempt and brow-beat- 
 ing of other men, their persons, intellect, performances, and 
 opinions." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " He descends to display his knowledge with pedantic 
 ostentation. . . . His vanity now and then betrays his 
 ignorance. . . . He had a vanity unworthy of his abili- 
 ties, to show, as may be suspected, the rank of the company 
 with whom he lived, by the use of French words which had 
 then crept into conversation. . . . His faults of negli- 
 gence are beyond recital. What he thought sufficient he did 
 not stop to make better, and allowed himself to leave many 
 parts unfinished, in confidence that his good lines would 
 overbalance the bad." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 "And so he translated Virgil not only into English but 
 into Dryden ; and so he was kind enough to translate Chaucer 
 
l6o DRYDEN 
 
 too, as an example, . . . and cheated the readers of the 
 old 'Knight's Tale' of sundry of their tears." Mrs. 
 Browning. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Let this suffice : nor thou, great saint, refuse 
 This humble tribute of no vulgar muse ; 
 Who, not by cares or wants or age depress'd, 
 Stems a wild deluge with a dauntless breast ; 
 And dares to sing thy praises in a clime 
 Where vice triumphs, and virtue is a crime ; 
 Where even to draw the picture of thy mind 
 Is satire on the most of human kind : 
 Take it, while yet 'tis praise ; before my rage, 
 Unsafely just, break loose on this bad age ; 
 So bad that thou thyself hadst no defence 
 From vice but barely by departing hence." Eleonora. 
 
 " Our author, by experience, finds it true, 
 'Tis much more hard to please himself than you : 
 And out of no feign'd modesty, this day 
 Damns his laborious trifle of a play : 
 Not that it's worse than what before he writ ; 
 But he has now another taste of wit ; 
 And, to confess a truth, though out of time, 
 Grows weary of his long-loved mistress, Rhyme. 
 Passions too fierce to be in fetters bound, 
 And nature flies him like enchanted ground : 
 What verse can do, he has performed in this, 
 Which he presumes the most correct of his ; 
 But spite of all his pride, a secret shame 
 Invades his breast at Shakespeare's sacred name." 
 
 Prologue to Aurengzebe. 
 
 11 Dulness is decent in the church and state. 
 But I forget that still 't is understood, 
 Bad plays are best described by showing good. 
 Sit silent then, that my pleased soul may see 
 A judging audience once, and worthy me ; 
 
DRYDEN l6l 
 
 My faithful scene from true records shall tell, 
 How Trojan valour did the Greek excel ; 
 Your great forefathers shall their fame regain, 
 And Homer's angry ghost repine in vain." 
 
 Prologue to Troilus and Cressida. 
 
 ii. Precision Mastery of Language. " He had, 
 beyond most, the gift of the right word. And if he does not, 
 like one or two of the great masters of song, stir one's sympa- 
 thies by that indefinable aroma so magical in arousing the 
 subtle associations of the soul, he has this in common with 
 the few great writers, the winged seeds of his thoughts embed 
 themselves in the memory and germinate there. . . . But 
 his strong sense, his command of the happy word, his wit, 
 which is distinguished by a certain breadth and, as it were, 
 power of generalization, as Pope's by keenness of edge and 
 point, were his whether he would or no. . . . Pithy 
 sentences and phrases always drop from Dryden's pen as if 
 unawares. ' ' Lowell. 
 
 11 He was the first writer under whose skillful management 
 the scientific vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. 
 Macaulay. 
 
 11 No English poet, perhaps no English writer, has attained 
 as regards expression such undisputed excellence." -James 
 Mitford. 
 
 " Great Dryden next whose tuneful muse affords 
 The sweetest numbers and the fittest words." Addison. 
 
 " Dryden purifies his own [style] and renders it more clear 
 by introducing close reasoning and precise words. 
 He bounds it [his thought] with exact terms justified by the 
 dictionary, with simple constructions justified by the gram- 
 mar, that the reader may have at every step a method of veri- 
 fication and a source of clearness. " Taine. 
 
 "The felicity of his language, the richness of his illustra- 
 tions, and the depth of his reflections, often supplied what 
 the scene wanted in natural passion." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 XI 
 
l62 DRYDEN 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Three poets in three distant ages born 
 Greece, Italy, and England did adorn. 
 The first in loftiness of thought surpass'd ; 
 The next in majesty ; in both the last. 
 The force of nature could no further go ; 
 To make a third she join'd the former two." 
 
 Under the Portrait of John Milton. 
 
 Some lazy ages, lost in sleep and ease, 
 
 No action leave to busy chronicles : 
 
 Such, whose supine felicity but makes 
 
 In story chasms, in epoch mistakes ; 
 
 O'er whom Time gently shakes his wings of down, 
 
 Till with his silent sickle they are mown." 
 
 Astrcea Redux. 
 
 Whatever happy region is thy place, 
 
 Cease thy celestial song a little space ; 
 
 Thou wilt have time enough for hymns divine, 
 
 Since heaven's eternal year is thine. 
 
 Hear then a mortal Muse thy praise rehearse, 
 
 In no ignoble verse ; 
 
 But such as thy own voice did practise here, 
 
 When thy first fruits of poesy were given ; 
 
 To make thyself a welcome inmate there : 
 
 While yet a young probationer, 
 
 And candidate of heaven." 
 
 An Ode to Mrs. Anne Killi^rew. 
 
POPE, 1688-1744 
 
 Biographical Outline. Alexander Pope, born in Lom- 
 bard Street, London, May 21, 1688 ; father a Roman Cath- 
 olic linen draper, in comfortable circumstances, who lived, 
 after 1700, at Binfield in Windsor Forest; Pope is a preco- 
 cious child, and is nicknamed " the little nightingale " because 
 of the sweetness of his voice ; in his eighth year he begins 
 Latin and Greek with a priest as tutor, and in his ninth year 
 he enters a Roman Catholic school at Twyford, near Win- 
 chester ; later he attends school at Marylebone and at Hyde 
 Park Corner ; he was remembered at Twyford because he was 
 once whipped for satirizing the master ; in his eleventh year 
 a severe illness, brought on "by perpetual application," ruins 
 his health and distorts his figure ; after a few months at 
 school he returns to his father's home, and is placed for a 
 time under another priest-tutor, but is soon left to pursue his 
 studies entirely by himself ; he reads voraciously and, accord- 
 ing to his own statement, studies Greek, Latin, French, Ital- 
 ian, and the English poets with as much zest as " a boy gath- 
 ering flowers ; " he begins early to imitate his favorite authors, 
 and in his twelfth year makes " a kind of play " from Olgiby's 
 translation of Homer, which is acted by his school-fellows ; 
 he "does nothing but read and write ; " during 1701-1703 
 he writes an epic poem entitled "Alexander," which he 
 burns in 1717, with Atterbury's approval ; about 1702 (when 
 he is but fourteen) he makes also a translation from Statins, 
 which he published in 1712; during his boyhood he also 
 makes several other translations from the classics and from 
 Chaucer. 
 
 In his fifteenth year he goes to London to study French 
 
 163 
 
i 64 POPE 
 
 and Italian, but too severe application brings on an illness 
 nearly fatal ; he regains health through daily rides, and early 
 begins to court the acquaintance of men of letters, who gen- 
 erally receive him with encouragement ; he is especially 
 aided by Sir William Trumbull, William Walsh, and Wych- 
 erley; he writes his "Pastorals" before he is eighteen, and 
 publishes one of them in 1706, at the request of Tonson ; he 
 is much influenced by Wycherley, eighteen years his senior, 
 whom Pope says he followed about " like a dog ; " he becomes 
 first known to the literary world in general through the publi- 
 cation of his " Pastorals" in 1709; these are favorably received, 
 and in May, 1711, he publishes, anonymously, his " Essay on 
 Criticism ; " the " Essay " is satirized by Dennis, but is praised 
 by Addison, whom Pope soon afterward meets through the 
 good offices of Steele, already an acquaintance of Pope's ; his 
 "Messiah " is first published May 14, 1712, in the Spectator ; 
 during the same year his " Rape of the Lock " and some of 
 his minor poems appear in the " Miscellanies," published by 
 Lintot ; "The Rape of the Lock" is warmly praised by 
 Addison, and is revised, greatly enlarged, and published by it- 
 self in 1714, adding much to Pope's reputation. 
 
 In March, 1712-13, he publishes his "Cooper's Hill," 
 partly written during boyhood, which, by its political charac- 
 ter, wins for Pope the friendship of Swift ; he also writes the 
 prologue for Addison's " Cato," which was produced April 13, 
 1713, but, through literary intrigues most discreditable to Pope, 
 his friendliness toward Addison is soon turned into hatred; 
 about this time he is introduced by Swift to Arbuthnot, and 
 with these two and Gay, Parnell, Congreve, and others, he 
 helps to form the famous "Scriblerus Club; " in October, 
 1713, after encouragement by Addison, Swift, and many 
 others, Pope publishes proposals for a translation of Homer's 
 "Iliad;" the proposal is received with enthusiasm by both 
 Whig and Tory writers, and the first four books of Pope's 
 "Iliad" appear in 1715 ; other volumes follow in 1716, 1717, 
 
POPE 165 
 
 1718, and two in 1720 ; all six volumes are sold for a guinea 
 each, and the first edition brings to Pope the unprecedented 
 sum of 5,000, thus making him financially independent for 
 life ; a contemporary translation of the first book of the 
 " Iliad " by Tickell is attributed by Pope to Addison, and this 
 probably gave rise to Pope's stricture on his former friend 
 ending with the famous couplet, 
 
 " Who but must laugh if such a man there be ? 
 Who would not weep if Atticus were he ? " 
 
 By the time of the publication of the sixth volume of his 
 " Iliad," Pope had become acknowledged as the leader among 
 Englishmen of letters then living ; although his Greek schol- 
 arship was known to be somewhat superficial, his literary and 
 financial success gave him high social rank, and he became a 
 welcome guest at many noble houses; in April, 1716, his 
 father's family leave Binfield and settle in Chiswick, near 
 many of Pope's aristocratic friends; his father dies in 1717, 
 and in 1719 Pope buys the lease of a house with five acres of 
 land at Twickenham, where he resides during the rest of his 
 life ; he invests in the famous South Sea scheme, sells out be- 
 fore the collapse, and makes some money by the speculation ; 
 about 1719 he begins his famous correspondence with Lady 
 Mary Wortley Montague and Martha Blount, both of whom 
 had great influence on Pope's life ; the popular report of his 
 love-affair, based on his " Lines to an Unfortunate Lady " 
 (published with other poems in 1717), is now known to have 
 been entirely unfounded ; the volume published in 1717 con- 
 tained his " Eloisa and Abelard " and his " Ode on St. 
 Cecilia's Day; " in 1722 occurs his famous and bitter quarrel 
 with Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who then lived near him 
 at Twickenham a quarrel supposed to have grown out of 
 contempt manifested by the lady toward Pope after a supposed 
 declaration of love on his part ; his relations with Martha 
 
i66 POPE 
 
 and Teresa Blount, his friends and neighbors, continued for 
 years, and seem to have been purely platonic. 
 
 In 1722 Pope edits the poems of Parnell, and begins for 
 Tonson an edition of Shakespeare, which is published in 1725 
 with little success; about 1724 Pope begins his translation of 
 the " Odyssey," aided by William Broome and by Elijah Fen- 
 ton, who translates twelve of the twenty-four books ; three 
 volumes of the " Odyssey " were published in 1725, and two 
 more in 1727, the whole bringing to Pope about ,3,800 ; a 
 bitter quarrel results with Broome, who was dissatisfied with 
 his share of the profits, and who was later attacked by Pope in 
 his "Bathos;" in 1725, when Bolingbroke returns from 
 exile, he settles at Danley, near Twickenham, and renews his 
 intimacy with Pope ; in the summer of 1726 Swift visits Lon- 
 don on Pope's invitation, and Pope arranges for the publica- 
 tion of "Gulliver's Travels; " about this time Bolingbroke, 
 Arbuthnot, Lord Oxford, Swift, and Pope unite in writing 
 three volumes of "Miscellanies," two volumes of which were 
 published in June, 1727; Swift is Pope's guest again in 
 1727 ; the third volume of the " Miscellanies " is published 
 in March, 1727-28, and contains Pope's satire "Bathos;" 
 it is supposed that Pope intended in "Bathos" to irritate 
 the future victims of his " Dunciad " into retorts, and the 
 satire had that effect; the " Dunciad " appeared May 28, 
 1728, and was published anonymously, purporting to have 
 been addressed to a friend of Pope's in answer to the attacks 
 provoked by " Bathos ; " a second edition of the " Dunciad " 
 appeared in 1729, but the poem was not acknowledged till it 
 appeared among Pope's works in 1735. 
 
 Stung by the retorts of the victims of the "Dunciad," 
 Pope founds, anonymously, the Grub Street Journal, and 
 continues it until 1737 ; he is induced to withdraw from this 
 dirty warfare by Bolingbroke, whom he reverenced, and to- 
 gether they plan an elaborate series of poems ; the result is 
 Pope's " Essay on Man " and his " Moral Essays; " the first 
 
POPE 167 
 
 of the "Moral Essays" that on Taste was published in 
 1731, and the second on Riches and third on the Charac- 
 ters of Men in 1733 ; the fourth on the Characters of 
 Women was written as early as 1733, but was not published 
 till 1735 ; the first part of the " Essay on Man " appeared in 
 1733 and the second in 1734, both anonymously; Boling- 
 broke is supposed to have supplied "the philosophic stamina" 
 of the " Essay on Man ; " the " Universal Prayer " was add- 
 ed to the "Essay" in 1738; at Bolingbroke's suggestion, 
 in 1733, Pope translates the first Satire of the second Book of 
 Horace " in a morning or two," and it is published soon af- 
 terward ; a gross insult to Lady Mary Wortley Montague con- 
 tained in the satire leads to another bitter quarrel between 
 Pope and her friends, and results in Pope's famous " Letter to 
 a Noble Lord " (suppressed during his life) and in his "Epis- 
 tle to Arbuthnot," published in January, 1734-35, which is 
 now regarded as Pope's masterpiece ; after a series of most 
 elaborate and contemptible manoeuvres on his part, Pope's cor- 
 respondence is published in May, 1737, and the imaginary 
 .correspondence there attributed to Addison, Steele, and Con- 
 greve produces for years in the public mind the utmost con- 
 fusion as to the relations of these four men of letters ; Pope's 
 deception in this whole matter was accidentally discovered 
 over a century later ; the publication of Pope's letter to Swift, 
 in 1741, was the outcome of a still more disgusting intrigue 
 on Pope's part, in which he had multiplied falsehood upon 
 falsehood ; his changing political opinions at this period are 
 portrayed in his " Epistle to Augustus," which was published 
 in March, 1737 ; he had been visited by the Prince of Wales 
 two years before, and his two dialogues, called eventually 
 " Epilogues to the Satires," published in 1738, were written 
 in answer to an attack on the Government. 
 
 After Bolingbroke retired to France in 1736, his place as 
 Mentor to Pope was taken by Warburton, who had defended 
 Pope in a series of letters replying to strictures upon the 
 
i 68 POPE 
 
 "Essay on Man;" Pope and Warburton visit Oxford to- 
 gether in 1741, and the degree of D.C.L. is offered to Pope, 
 but he declines it because a proposed D.D. is refused to War- 
 burton ; at Warburton's suggestion Pope now undertakes to 
 complete the " Dunciad " with a fourth book, which is pub- 
 lished in March, 1742 ; it is not received with favor, and a 
 criticism of it by Colley Gibber in his " Rehearsal " leads to 
 another bitter personal quarrel ; a complete edition of the 
 "Dunciad," with notes by Warburton, was published in 1742, 
 and contained several changes, including the substitution of 
 Gibber for Theobald as the hero of the poem and the attack 
 on Bentley; Pope spends much of his time during his last 
 three years in visiting at country-houses ; he revises his works, 
 and again entertains Bolingbroke at Twickenham ; he dies at 
 Twickenham, May 30, 1744, and is buried in Twickenham 
 church; to Martha Blount, who had been attentive to his 
 comfort till the last, he leaves ^1,000 and the income from 
 his property during her life. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON POPE. 
 
 Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnams, I : 94- 
 
 137. 
 Hazlitt, Wm., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 
 
 94-108. 
 St. Beuve, C. A., "English Portraits." New York, 1875, Holt, 277- 
 
 305. 
 De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, 4:237-288; 
 
 ii : 21-35 and 51-156. 
 
 Birrell, A., " Obiter Dicta." New York, 1887, 2 : 52-109. 
 Kingsley, C., " Literary and General Lectures." New York, 1890, 
 
 Macmillan, 71-78. 
 Gosse, E., "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." New York, 
 
 1889, Macmillan, 105-134. 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 
 
 1:303-321. 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 4:1-58. 
 
POPE 169 
 
 Browning, E. B., "Essays on the Poets." New York, 1863, Miller, 
 
 201-207. 
 Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of the Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 109- 
 
 134- 
 
 Tuckerman, H. T., " Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, Fran- 
 cis, 73-83. 
 Dennis, J., " Studies in English Literature." London, 1876, Stamford, 
 
 i- 7 6. 
 Howitt, Wm., "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge. 
 Dawson, G., "Biographical Lectures." London, 1886, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 225-235. 
 Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 
 
 Green, & Co., 40-47. 
 Hannay, J., " Satires and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 151- 
 
 158. 
 Phillips, M. G., " A Manual of English Literature." New York, 1893, 
 
 Harper, I : 453~499- 
 Nicoll, H. J., " Landmarks of English Literature." New York, 1883, 
 
 Appleton, 185-194. 
 Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Holt, 374-388. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "Sketches of the Reign of George II." Edinburgh, 
 
 1859, Blackwood, 263-323. 
 Stephen, L., " English Men of Letters." New York, 1880, Harper, v. 
 
 index. 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets," (Pattison). New York, 1881, Mac- 
 
 millan. 
 Warton, J., "The Genius and Writings of Pope." London, 1806, 
 
 Maiden, 2 vols. 
 
 Williams, H., " English Letters." London, 1886, Bell, I : 275-348. 
 Johnson, S., " Lives of the Poets " (Arnold). New York, 1889, Holt, 
 
 327-455. 
 
 Dial (Chicago), 22 : 245-246 (E. E. Hale, Jr.). 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 6 : 713-716 (H. T. Tuckerman). 
 
 Cornhill Magazine, 28 : 583-604 (L. Stephen). 
 
 Blacktvood's Magazine, 57 : 369-400 (J. Wilson). 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 48 : 452-466 (C. Kingsley): 83:284-301 (L. Ste- 
 phen). 
 
 Taifs Magazine, 1 8 : 407- (T. De Quincey). 
 
 North American Review, 13 : 450-473 (W. H. Prescott) ; 1 12 : 178-217 
 Q. R. Lowell). 
 
I/O POPE 
 
 Scribner's Magazine, 3 : 533~55 (A. Dobson). 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 58:385-392 (W. Minto) ; 61:176-185 (W. 
 Minto). 
 
 //choi 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Conciseness Terseness Exactness. " I 
 
 chose verse," says Pope in his * Design of an Essay on Man,' 
 " because I could express them [ideas] more shortly this way 
 than in prose itself." 
 
 " If the ideas are mediocre, the art of expressing them is 
 truly marvellous. . . . Every word is effective ; every 
 passage must be read slowly ; every epithet is an epitome ; a 
 more condensed style was never written. . . . Never 
 was familiar knowledge expressed in words more effective, in 
 style more condensed, in melody more sweet, in contrasts 
 more striking, in embellishments more blazing. [His style 
 is characterized as] refined, ornate, antithetical, pointed, 
 terse, regular, graceful, musical." Taine. 
 
 "One can open upon wit and epigram at any page. In- 
 deed, I think that one gets a little tired of the invariable this 
 set off by the inevitable that, and wishes antithesis would let 
 him have a little quiet now and then. ... In all of these 
 [quotations] we notice that terseness in which (regard being 
 had to his especial range of thought) Pope has never been 
 excelled. . . . The * Essay on Man ' proves only two 
 things beyond a question that Pope was not a great thinker 
 and that, wherever he found a thought, no matter what, he 
 could express it so tersely, so clearly, and with such smooth- 
 ness of versification, as to give it everlasting currency. . . . 
 The accuracy on which Pope prided himself, and for which 
 Jie is commended, was not accuracy of thought so much as of 
 ex pressi on . " Lowell. 
 
 "There is something charming even to an enemy's ear in 
 this exquisite balancing of sounds and phrases, these 'shining 
 rows' of oppositions and appositions, this glorifying of com- 
 
POPE 1 7 1 
 
 monplaces by antithetic processes, this catching in the re- 
 bound, of emphasis upon rhyme and rhyme; all, in short, of 
 this Indian jugglery and Indian carving upon cherry-stones! " 
 Mrs. Browning. 
 
 "Pope has regularly crowded the utmost thought into the 
 smallest space. This is the principle of his method. How 
 many judicious and pointed remarks, eternally true, do I 
 glean when reading his works, and how they are expressed in 
 a brief, concise, elegant manner, once for all ! ' ' St. Beuve. 
 
 "The charm of Pope's best passages, when it does not 
 rest upon his Dutch picturesqueness of touch, is due to the 
 intellectual pleasure given by his adroit and stimulating man- 
 ner of producing his ideas and by the astonishing exactitude 
 and propriety of his phrase. When it is all summed up, we 
 may not be much wiser, but we are sure to be much the 
 brighter and alerter." Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " The portraits in Pope's 'Essay on Man' are masterpieces 
 of English versification, medals cut with such sharp outlines 
 and such vigor of hand that they have lost none of their 
 freshness by lapse of time. . . . Pope's wit is of that 
 perfect kind which does not seem to be sought for its own 
 sake but to be the appropriate vehicle for the meaning. We 
 are not made to feel that he is constraining himself to write in 
 couplets, but that his couplets are the shape in which he can 
 best make his thoughts tell." Mark Pattison. 
 
 11 When Pope is at his best every word tells. His precision 
 and firmness of touch enable him to get the greatest possible 
 meaning into a narrow compass." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " He examined lines and words with minute and punctili- 
 ous observation, and retouched every part with indefatigable 
 diligence, till he had nothing left to be forgiven. . . . 
 The dilatory caution of Pope enabled him to condense his 
 sentiments, to multiply his images, and to accumulate all that 
 study might produce or chance might supply." Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
POPE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Pleasures the sex, as children birds, pursue, 
 Still out of reach, yet never out of view ; 
 Sure, if they catch, to spoil the toy at most, 
 To covet flying and regret when lost : 
 
 See how the world its veterans rewards ! 
 A youth of frolics, an old age of cards ; 
 Fair to no purpose, artful to no end, 
 Young without lovers, old without a friend ; 
 A fop their passion, but their prize a sot." 
 
 The Rape of the Lock. 
 
 Great Nature spoke ; observant men obey'd ; 
 
 Cities were built, societies were made : 
 
 Here rose a little state ; another near 
 
 Grew by like means, and join'd through love or fear. 
 
 Did here the trees with ruddier burthens bend, 
 
 And there the streams in purer rills descend ? 
 
 What war could ravish, commerce could bestow, 
 
 And he returned a friend, who came a foe. 
 
 Converse and love, mankind may strongly draw, 
 
 When love was liberty, and nature law. 
 
 Thus states were formed ; the name of king unknown, 
 
 Till common interest placed the sway in one. 
 
 'Twas VIRTUE ONLY (or in arts or arms, 
 
 Diffusing blessings, or averting harms), 
 
 The same which in a sire the sons obey'd, 
 
 A prince the father of a people made." 
 
 Essay on Man. 
 
 " Happy the man whose wish and care 
 
 A few paternal acres bound, 
 Content to breathe his native air 
 In his own ground. 
 
 Whose herds with milk, whose fields with bread, 
 
 Whose flocks supply him with attire, 
 Whose trees in summer yield him shade, 
 
 In winter fire. 
 
POPE 173 
 
 Blest, who can unconcern'dly find 
 Hours days and years slide soft away 
 
 In health of body, peace of mind, 
 Quiet by day." Ode on Solitude. 
 
 2. Point Balance Epigram. " The antitheses fol- 
 low each other in couples like a succession of columns ; 
 thirteen couples form a suite ; and the last is raised above 
 the rest by a word, which concentrates and combines all." 
 Taine. 
 
 " Pope must be allowed to have established a style of his 
 own, in which he is without a rival. ... In other hands 
 this prolongation of the same form is tame ; in Pope's it in- 
 terests us, so much variety is there in the arrangement and 
 the adornments. In one place the antithesis is comprised in 
 a single line, in another it occupies two ; now it is in the 
 substantives, now in the adjectives and verbs ; now only in 
 the ideas ; now it penetrates the sound and position of the 
 words. In vain we see it reappear ; we are not wearied, 
 because each time it adds somewhat to our idea, and shows 
 us the object in a new light." Lowell. 
 
 "The ' Essay on Criticism' is like a metrical multiplica- 
 tion table. It required very little reading of the French text- 
 books to find the maxims which Pope has here strung together. 
 But he has dressed them so neatly and turned them out with 
 such sparkle and point that these truisms have acquired a 
 weight not their own." De Qutncey. 
 
 " They [the artificial poets] could not mean greatly, but 
 such meaning as they had they labored to express in the most 
 terse and pointed form which our language is capable of. It 
 not poets, they were literary artists. They showed that a 
 couplet can do the work of a page and a single line produce 
 effects which, in the infancy of writing, would require sen- 
 tences." Mark Pattison. 
 
174 POPE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " See the same man, in vigour, in the gout ; 
 Alone, in company ; in place, or out ; 
 Early at business, and at hazard late ; 
 Mad at a fox-chase, wise at a debate ; 
 Drunk at a borough, civil at a ball ; 
 Friendly at Hackney, faithless at Whitehall." 
 
 Moral Essays. 
 
 " But where's the man who counsel can bestow, 
 Still pleased to teach, and yet not proud to know ? 
 Unbias'd, or by favour or by spite ; 
 Not dully prepossessed, not blindly right ; 
 Though learn'd, well-bred ; and though well-bred, sincere ; 
 Modestly bold, and humanly severe ; 
 Who to a friend his faults can freely show, 
 And gladly praise the merit of a foe ? 
 Blest with a taste exact, yet unconfined ; 
 A knowledge both of books and human kind." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 " Of manners gentle, of affections mild ; 
 In wit a man, simplicity, a child ; 
 With native humour tempering virtuous rage, 
 Form'd to delight at once and lash the age. 
 Above temptation, in a low estate, 
 And uncorrupted even among the great : 
 A safe companion, and an easy friend, 
 Unblamed through life, lamented in thy end." 
 
 Epitaph on Gay. 
 
 3. Melody. "In two directions, in that of condensing 
 and pointing his meaning and in that of drawing the utmost 
 harmony of sound out of the couplet, Pope carried versifica- 
 tion far beyond the point at which it was when he took it up. 
 Because, after Pope, this trick of versification became com- 
 mon property, and ' every warbler had his tune by heart/ we 
 
POPE 175 
 
 are apt to overlook the merit of the first invention. 
 We have [in the quotation below] twenty-four lines (eleven in 
 the Greek) of finished versification, the rapid, facile, and me- 
 lodious flow of which, concentrating all the felicities of Pope's 
 higher style, has never been surpassed in English poetry." 
 Mark Partisan. 
 
 " The troops, exulting, sat in order round, 
 And beaming fires illumined all the ground. 
 As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night, 
 O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light, 
 When not a breath disturbs the deep serene, 
 And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene ; 
 Around her throne the vivid planets roll, 
 And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole, 
 O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed, 
 And tip with silver every mountain's head." 
 
 Translation of the Iliad. 
 
 " To Pope the English language will always be indebted. 
 He, more than any other before or since, discovered its power 
 of melody, enriched it with poetical elegances, with happy 
 combinations. ' ' Taine. 
 
 " Again, your verse is orderly and more 
 1 The waves behind impel the waves before;' 
 Monotonously musical they glide, 
 Till couplet unto couplet hath replied." 
 
 Andrew Lang. 
 
 " He gave the most striking examples of his favorite theory, 
 that ' sound should seem an echo to the sense. ' He carried 
 out the improvement in diction which Dryden commenced ; 
 and while Addison was producing beautiful specimens of re- 
 formed prose, Pope gave a polish and point to verse before 
 unknown." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
176 POPE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Now under hanging mountains, 
 Beside the falls of fountains, 
 Or where Hebrus wanders, 
 Rolling in meanders, 
 All alone, 
 
 Unheard, unknown, 
 He makes his moan ; 
 And calls her ghost, 
 For ever, ever, ever lost ! 
 Now with furies surrounded, 
 Despairing, confounded, 
 He trembles, he glows, 
 Amidst Rhodope's snows: 
 
 See, wild as the winds, o'er the desert he flies ; 
 Hark ! Haemus resounds with the Bacchanals' cries 
 Ah see, he dies ! " 
 
 Ode on St. Cecilia! 's Day. 
 
 " Hark ! they whisper ; angels say, 
 ' Sister spirit, come away ! ' 
 What is this absorbs me quite ? 
 Steals my senses, shuts my sight, 
 Drowns my spirits, draws my breath? 
 Tell me, my soul, can this be death ? 
 
 The world recedes, it disappears ! 
 Heaven opens on my eyes ! my ears 
 
 With sounds seraphic ring : 
 Lend, lend your wings ! I mount ! I fly \ 
 O Grave ! where is thy victory ? 
 
 O Death ! where is thy sting ? " 
 
 The Dying Christian to His Soul. 
 
 " But now secure the painted vessel glides, 
 The sunbeams trembling on the floating tides 
 While melting music steals upon the sky, 
 And soften'd sounds along the waters die ; 
 
POPE 177 
 
 Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently play, 
 Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay 
 All but the sylph ; with careful thoughts opprest, 
 The impending woe sat heavy on his breast. 
 He summons straight his denizens of air ; 
 The lucid squadrons round the sails repair : 
 Soft o'er the shrouds aerial whispers breathe, 
 That seemed but zephyrs to the train beneath." 
 
 The Rape of the Lock. 
 
 4. Artificiality. " Dryden and Pope are the great mas- 
 ters of the artificial style of poetry in our language. . . . 
 If, indeed, by a great poet we mean one who gives the utmost 
 grandeur to our conceptions of nature, or the utmost force to 
 the passions of the heart, Pope was not in this sense a great 
 poet ; for the bent, the characteristic power of his mind, lay 
 the clean contrary way : namely, in representing things as 
 they appear to the indifferent observer, stripped of prejudice 
 and passion, as in his Critical Essays ; or in representing them 
 in the most contemptible and insignificant point of view, as 
 in his Satires ; or in clothing the little with mock dignity, as 
 in his poems of Fancy ; or in adorning the trivial incidents 
 and familiar relations of life with the utmost elegance of ex- 
 pression. ... He was not distinguished as a poet, of 
 lofty enthusiasm, of strong imagination, with a passionate 
 sense of the beauties of nature, or a deep insight into the 
 workings of the heart ; but he was a wit and a critic, a man 
 of sense, of observation, and of the world, with a keen relish 
 for the elegances of art, ... a quick tact for propriety 
 of thought and manners as established by the forms and cus- 
 toms of society. . He was, in a word, the poet, not 
 of nature, but of art. . He saw nature only dressed 
 by art ; he judged of beauty by fashion ; he sought for truth in 
 the opinions of the world ; he judged of the feelings of others 
 by his own. . . . Pope's muse never wandered with safety 
 but from his library to his grotto or from his grotto into his li- 
 12 
 
178 POPE 
 
 brary back again. ... He could describe the faultless, 
 whole-length mirror that reflected his own person better than 
 the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the face of heaven, 
 a piece of cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with more brill- 
 iance and effect than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the 
 sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp than 
 with the < pale reflex of Cynthia's brow.' . . . That 
 which was nearest to him was the greatest : the fashion of the 
 day bore sway in his mind over the immutable laws of nature. 
 . . . His mind was the antithesis of strength and grandeur ; 
 its power was the power of indifference. He had none of the 
 enthusiasm of poetry ; he was in poetry what the skeptic is in 
 religion. . . . For rocks and seas and mountains he gives 
 us artificial grass-plats, gravel walks, and tinkling rills : for 
 earth-quakes and tempests, the breaking of a flower- pot or the 
 fall of a china jar. " William Hazlitt. 
 
 11 1 admire Pope in the very highest degree ; but I admire 
 him as a pyrotechnic artist for producing brilliant and evanes- 
 cent effects out of elements that have hardly a moment's life 
 within them. There is a flash and a startling explosion ; then 
 there is a dazzling coruscation ; all purple and gold ; the 
 eye aches under the suddenness of a display that, springing 
 like a burning arrow out of darkness, rushes back into dark- 
 ness with arrowy speed, and in a moment all is over. . . . 
 But Pope was all jets and tongues of flame ; all showers of scin- 
 tillation and sparkle. . . . To Pope we owe it that we 
 can now claim a ... pre-eminence in the sportive and 
 aerial graces of the mock-heroic and satiric muse." De 
 Quincey. 
 
 " As truly as Shakespeare is the poet of man as God made 
 him, dealing with great passions and innate motives, so truly 
 is Pope the poet of society, the delineator of manners, the ex- 
 poser of those motives which may be called acquired, whose 
 spring is in institutions and habits of purely worldly origin. 
 . Pope's style is the apotheosis of clearness, point, 
 
)PE 179 
 
 technical skill, or the ease that comes of practice, not of the 
 fulness of original power. . . . He stands for exactness of 
 intellectual expression, for perfect propriety of phrase (I speak 
 of him at his best), and is a striking instance how much suc- 
 cess and permanence of reputation depend on conscientious 
 finish as well as on native endowment. . . . But the 
 defect of this kind of criticism was that it ignored imagination 
 altogether, and sent Nature about her business as an imperti- 
 nent baggage, whose household loom competed unlawfully 
 with the machine-made fabrics, so exquisitely uniform in 
 pattern, of the royal manufactories. . . . Even poor old 
 Dennis himself had arrived at a kind of muddled notion that 
 artifice was not precisely art, that there were depths in human 
 nature which the most perfectly manufactured line of five feet 
 could not sound." Lowell, 
 
 " He has no romance, no spirituality, no mystery, and the 
 highest regions of poetry he never so much as dreams of; but 
 in the lower regions there is perhaps no single writer who 
 showers fine things about him with such a prodigality of wit, 
 or dazzles us so much with the mere exercise of his intelli- 
 gen ce. " Edmund Gosse. 
 
 "Pope has no dash, no naturalness or manliness; he has 
 no more ideas than passions at least such ideas as a man feels 
 it necessary to write, and in connection with which we lose 
 thought of words. Religious controversy and party quarrels re- 
 sound about him ; he studiously avoids them ; amidst all these 
 shocks his chief care is to preserve his writing-desk. 
 In reality he did not write because he thought, but thought 
 in order to write; manuscript, and the noise it makes in the 
 world when printed, was his idol ; if he wrote verses, it was 
 merely for the sake of doing so. ... The Last scene [of 
 the ' Dunciad '] ends with noise, cymbals and trombones, 
 crackers and fire- works. As for me, I carry away from this 
 celebrated entertainment only the remembrance of a hubbub. 
 Unwittingly I have counted the lights, I know the machinery, 
 
180 POPE 
 
 I have touched the toilsome stage -property of apparitions 
 and allegories. I bid farewell to the scene-painter, the 
 machinist, the manager of literary effects, and go elsewhere 
 to find the poet. . . . Pope's most perfect poems are 
 those made up of precepts and arguments. Artifice in these is 
 less shocking than elsewhere. ... A great writer is a 
 man who, having passions, knows his dictionary and his gram- 
 mar; Pope thoroughly knew his dictionary and his grammar, 
 but stopped there. . . . The most correct and formal of 
 men. . . . These caricatures seem strange to us, but do 
 not amuse. The wit is no wit: all is calculated, combined, 
 artificially prepared. ' ' Taine. 
 
 " Pope's muse had left the free forest for Will's coffee- 
 house, and haunted ladies' boudoirs instead of the brakes of 
 the enchanted island. Her wings were clogged with ' gums 
 and pomatums,' and her * thin essence' had shrunk ' like a 
 rivel'd flower.' . . . Nature has, for him, ceased to be 
 inhabited by sylphs and fairies, except to amuse the fancies of 
 fine ladies and gentlemen, and has not yet received a new in- 
 terest from the fairy tales of science. . . . Pope always 
 resembles an orator whose gestures are studied, and who 
 thinks while he is speaking of the fall of his robes and the 
 attitude of his hand. He is throughout academical ; and 
 though knowing with admirable nicety how grief should 
 be represented, and what have been the expedients of his 
 best predecessors, he misses the one essential touch of spon- 
 taneous impulse. . . . The fragments cohere by exter- 
 nal cement, not by an internal unity of thought." Leslie 
 Stephen. 
 
 " Of the ' wild benefit of nature' Pope had small notion. 
 
 . . Of that indescribable something, that ' greatness ' 
 which causes Dryden to uplift a lofty head from the deep pit 
 of his corruption, neither Pope's character nor his style bears 
 any trace. ... A cleverer fellow than Pope never com- 
 menced author. He was, in his own mundane way, as de- 
 
POPE l8l 
 
 termined to be a poet, and the best going, as John Milton 
 himself. He took pains to be splendid he polished and 
 pruned. His first draft never reached the printer though he 
 sometimes said it did." Augustine Birrell. 
 
 " There are no pictures of nature or of simple emotion in 
 all his writings. He is the poet of town life and of high 
 life and of literary life, and seems so much afraid of incurring 
 ridicule by the display of feeling or unregulated fancy that it 
 is not difficult to believe that he would have thought such 
 ridicule well directed." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " The fact is that, in a very artificial age (and such was 
 the age of Pope), an artificial poet is the highest poet attain- 
 able; his very artificiality of matter and style is his authenti- 
 cation as poet. . . . The only condition, then, on which 
 we can have real poets in an artificial age is that they should 
 be in a measure artificial ; on that condition we can have 
 them, and in Pope England had one truly super -eminent." 
 W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " The taste of Pope was evidently artificial to the last de- 
 gree. He delighted in a grotto decked out with looking- 
 glasses and colored stones as much as Wordsworth in a 
 mountain path, or Scott in a border antiquity. The ' Rape 
 of the Lock ' is considered his most characteristic production, 
 and abounds with brilliant fancy and striking invention. But 
 to what is it devoted? The celebration of a trivial incident 
 in fashionable life. Its inspiration is not of the grove, but of 
 the boudoir. It is not bright with the radiance of truth, but 
 with the polish of art. It breathes not the fragrance of wild 
 flowers, but the fumes of tea. It displays not the simple 
 features of nature, but the paraphernalia of the toilet." 
 H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Pope's ' Messiah ' reads to us like a sickly paraphrase, in 
 which all the majesty of the original is dissipated. ' Right- 
 eousness ' becomes ' dewy nectar ; ' ' sheep ' are ' the fleecy 
 care ; ' the call to Jerusalem to ' arise and shine ' is turned 
 
l82 POPE 
 
 into an invocation to ' exalt her tow'ry head.' The * fir tree 
 and box tree' of Isaiah are ' the spiry fir and shapely box.' ' 
 Mark Pattison. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is crowned, 
 The berries crackle, and the mill turns round ; 
 On shining altars of Japan they raise 
 The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze : 
 From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, 
 While China's earth receives the smoking tide." 
 
 The Rape of the Lock. 
 
 " Swift fly the years, and rise the expected morn ! 
 Oh spring to light, auspicious Babe, be born ! 
 See, Nature hastes her earliest wreaths to bring, 
 With all the incense of the breathing spring : 
 See lofty Lebanon his head advance, 
 See nodding forests on the mountains dance : 
 See spicy clouds from lowly Saron rise, 
 And Carmel's flowery top perfumes the skies ! 
 Hark ! a glad voice the lonely desert cheers ; 
 Prepare the way ! a God, a God appears : 
 A God, a God! the vocal hills reply, 
 The rocks proclaim the approaching Deity. 
 Lo, earth receives him from the bending skies ! " 
 
 Messiah. 
 
 " Thou, too, great father of the British floods ! 
 With joyful pride survey'st our lofty woods ; 
 Where towering oaks their growing honours rear, 
 And future navies on thy shores appear, 
 Not Neptune's self from all her streams receives 
 A wealthier tribute than to thine he gives. 
 No seas so rich, so gay no banks appear, 
 No lake so gentle and no spring so clear. 
 Nor Po so swells the fabling poet's lays, 
 While led along the skies his current strays, 
 As thine, which visits Windsor's famed abodes, 
 To grace the mansion of our earthly gods : 
 
POPE 183 
 
 Nor all his stars above a lustre show 
 Like the bright beauties on thy banks below ; 
 Where Jove, subdued by mortal passion still, 
 Might change Olympus for a nobler hill." 
 
 Windsor Forest. 
 
 5. Vivid Portraiture Individuality. " He did in 
 
 some inadequate sense hold up the mirror to nature. . . . 
 It was a mirror in a drawing-room, but it gave back a faithful 
 image of society, powdered and rouged, to be sure, and in- 
 tent on trifles, yet still as human in its own way as the heroes 
 of Homer in theirs." Lowell. 
 
 " There is a kind [ot writing] in which he succeeds. . . . 
 His descriptive and oratorical talents find in portraiture mat- 
 ter which suits them. . . . Several of his portraits are 
 medals worthy of finding a place in the cabinets of the curious 
 and of remaining in the archives of the human race; when he 
 chisels one of these heads, the comprehensive images, the un- 
 looked-for connections of words, the sustained and multiplied 
 contrasts, the perpetual and extraordinary conciseness, the 
 incessant and increasing impulse of all the strokes of eloquence 
 brought to bear upon the same spot, stamp upon the memory 
 an impress which we never forget." Taine. 
 
 "Like all the greatest poets, Pope is individual and local. 
 He can paint with his full power only what he sees. . . . 
 He can pick out all the flaws, all the stains, combine them 
 effectively, and present them as a picture of the man. To 
 his portraits none can deny a certain likeness." Mark Patti 
 son. 
 
 "Each of these descriptions [of Addison and others] is, 
 indeed, a masterpiece in its way ; the language is inimitably 
 clear and pointed." Leslie Stephen. 
 
1 84 POPE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Statesman, yet friend to truth ! of soul sincere, 
 In action faithful, and in honour clear ! 
 Who broke no promise, served" no private end, 
 Who gained no title, and who lost no friend ; 
 Ennobled by himself, by all approved, 
 Praised, wept, and honour'd by the muse he loved." 
 
 On James Craggs, Esq. 
 
 11 Go ! fair example of untainted youth, 
 Of modest wisdom and pacific truth : 
 Composed in sufferings and in joy spdate, 
 Good without noise, without pretension great, 
 Just of thy word, in every thought sincere, 
 Who knew no wish but what the world might hear. 
 Of softest manners, unaffected mind, 
 Lover of peace, and friend of humankind : 
 Go live ! for Heaven's eternal year is thine, 
 Go, and exalt thy mortal to divine." To Robert Digby. 
 
 / 6. Meanness Coarseness Malignity. " The 
 
 nDunciad ' is a personal satire, or lampoon, directed against 
 the small authors of the day, who are bespattered with much 
 mud and little wit, without any pretense of disguise and under 
 their own names . . . an amalgam of dirt, ribaldry, and 
 petty spite. . . . And against whom is this petty irrita- 
 tion felt ? Against feeble journalists, brutal pamphleteers, 
 starving rhymesters, and a crew of hackney authors, bohemians 
 of ink and paper below literature. To sting and wound these 
 unfortunates gave Pope pleasure as he sate, meditating stabs, 
 in his elegant villa, the resort of the rich and the noble ! By 
 attacking these, he lowers himself to their level. The first 
 poet of the age of the century chooses to hand himself 
 down to posterity as bandying scurrilities with the meanest 
 scribblers, hired defamers, the banditti of the printing-office, 
 ready at the shortest notice to deliver half a crown's worth of 
 
POPE 185 
 
 slander. . . . His more elaborate portraits are so many 
 virulent and abusive lampoons. In his savage assaults on 
 Lady Mary Wortley Montague and on old Lord Hervey, he 
 passed the bounds of the rules of decorum recognized, not to 
 say in refined but in decent society. His verses on Addison 
 violate only truth and good feeling. But it is not only in his 
 individual portraits that he is carried beyond the bounds of 
 civility, his whole satire is pitched in a key which good taste 
 is compelled to disown. It is trenchant and direct. It is 
 not merely caustic, it is venomous. It betrays a spiteful pur- 
 pose in the satirist. . . . Pope was conscious of a talent 
 for caustic effects, conscious that he could do better than any- 
 one what every one else was doing sting with epigram. 
 
 He was capable of the malice which thirsts for leav- 
 ing wounds. All those bitter couplets were not impulse or 
 fashion but meditated stabs of personal vengeance. 
 For all outside his own circle he has nothing but bitterness. 
 
 He fell furiously upon the trade of authorship, 
 treated poverty as a vice, and descends even to contrast his 
 own ' poetic dignity and ease ' with the raggedness and din- 
 nerlessness of the sons of rhyme. The ' Dunciad ' is wholly 
 inspired by this animosity against needy authors. 
 Pope too often allows the personal grudge to be seen through 
 the surface of public police which he puts on his work. 
 But the thin disguise of offended virtue is too often a cloak for 
 revenge. His most pungent verses can always be referred back 
 to some personal cause of affront. , . . He knowingly 
 threw away fame to indulge his piques." Mark Pattison. 
 
 "In his lifetime ' the wasp of Twickenham' could sting 
 through a sevenfold covering of pride or stupidity. . . . 
 We have to add all the cases in which Pope attacked his 
 enemies under feigned names, and then disavowed his attacks. 
 
 He is the man distinguished beyond all other writ- 
 ers for the bitterness of his resentment against all small critics; 
 who disfigures his best poems by his petty vengeance for old 
 
1 86 POPE 
 
 attacks. . . . The 'Dunciad,' indeed, is, beyond all 
 question, full of coarse abuse. The second book, in particu- 
 lar, illustrates that strange delight in the physically disgusting 
 which Johnson notices as characteristic of Pope and his 
 master, Swift." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " However great his merit in expression, I think it impossi- 
 ble that a true poet could have written such a satire as the 
 ' Dunciad,' which is even nastier than it is witty. It is filthy 
 even in a filthy age, and Swift himself could not have gone 
 beyond some parts of it. One's mind needs to be sprinkled 
 with some disinfecting fluid after reading it." Lowell. 
 
 "The 'Dunciad/ in which he endeavored to sink into 
 contempt all the writers by whom he had been attacked and 
 some others whom he thought unable to defend themselves 
 . . . The incessant and unappeasable malignity of Pope. 
 ... He expected that everything should give way to his 
 ease or humour ; as a child, whose parents will not hear her 
 cry, has an unresisted dominion in the nursery. ... He 
 was fretful and easily displeased, and allowed himself to be 
 capriciously resentful. . . . Pope and Swift had an 
 unnatural delight in ideas physically impure, such as every 
 other tongue utters with unwillingness and of which every ear 
 shrinks from mention." Samuel Johnson. 
 
 "Like a hornet, who is said to leave his sting in the 
 wound and then languish away, Pope felt greatly exhausted 
 by the efforts connected with the ' Dunciad.' . . . Pope, 
 besides that the basis of his ridicule is continually too narrow, 
 local, and casual, is rank to utter corruption with a disease 
 far deeper than false refinement or conventionalism." De 
 Quincey. 
 
 "It is not unfitting that so quarrelsome a man as Pope 
 should have been the occasion of so much quarrelsomeness in 
 others. . . . The age was a scandalous, ill-living age, 
 and Pope, who was a most confirmed gossip and tale-bearer, 
 picked up all that was going. ... If the historian or 
 
POPE 187 
 
 the moralist seeks an illustration of the coarseness and brutal- 
 ity of their style [the small writers of Pope's day], he finds it 
 only too easily, not in the works of the dead dunces, but in 
 the pages of their persecutor. ... Pope had none of 
 the grave purpose which makes us, at all events, partially 
 sympathize with Ben Jonson in his quarrels with the poet- 
 asters of his day. It is a mere toss-up whose name you may 
 find in the ' Dunciad ' a miserable scribbler's or a resplen- 
 dent scholar's ; a tasteless critic's or an immortal wit's. A 
 satirist who places Richard Bentley and Daniel Defoe 
 amongst the dunces must be content to abate his pretensions 
 to be regarded as a social purge. . . . Pope greatly 
 enjoyed the fear he excited. . . . Many men must 
 have been glad when they read in their scanty journals that 
 Mr. Pope lay dead in his villa at Twickenham. They 
 breathed the easier for the news. Personal satire may be a 
 legitimate but it is an ugly weapon. . . . His ' Eloisa ' 
 is marred by a most unfeeling coarseness." Augustine 
 BirrelL 
 
 " He could breathe only in an atmosphere of intrigue, and 
 the physical excitement of anger was the keenest pleasure his 
 nerves could enjoy. . . . Since the publication of the 
 Caryll correspondence Pope stands revealed, beyond any 
 hope of justification, as an unscrupulous and intriguing trick' 
 ster, " Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " He was as crafty and malignant as a nervous abortion, 
 which he was. When he wanted anything he dared no ask 
 for it plainly ; with hints and contrivances of speech he 
 induced people to mention it, to bring it forward, after which 
 he would make use of it. . . He had an ugly liking for 
 
 artifice, and played a disloyal trick on Lord Bolingbroke, his 
 greatest friend. . . He had all the appetite and whims 
 
 of an old child, an old invalid, an old author, an old bache- 
 lor. . . . These villainies, this foul linen, the greasy 
 coat six years old, the musty pudding, and the rest, are to be 
 
i88 POPE 
 
 found in Pope as in Hogarth, with English coarseness and 
 precision. This is their error ; they are realists, even under 
 the classical wig ; they do not disguise what is ugly and mean ; 
 they describe that ugliness and meanness with their exact 
 outlines and distinguishing marks. . . . This is the 
 reason why their satires are so harsh. . . . Seldom has 
 so much talent been expended to produce so much ennui." 
 Taine. 
 
 " The Wicked Wasp of Twickenham." Lady Mary Wort- 
 ley Montagu. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Though Artemisia [Queen Caroline] talks by fits 
 Of councils, classics, fathers, wits, 
 Reads Malebranche, Boyle, and Locke : 
 
 Yet in some things methinks she fails 
 'Twere well if she would pare her nails 
 
 And wear a cleaner smock. 
 
 Haughty and huge as High-Dutch bride, 
 
 Such nastiness and so much pride 
 
 Are oddly joined by fate : 
 
 On her large squab you find her spread, 
 
 Like a fat corpse upon a bed, 
 
 That lies and stinks in state." Artemisia. 
 
 " Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings [Lord HerveyJ, 
 This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings ; 
 Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys, 
 Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys : 
 So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 
 In mumbling of the game they dare not bite. 
 Eternal smiles his emptiness betray, 
 As shallow streams run dimpling all the way. 
 Whether in florid impotence he speaks, 
 And as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks, 
 Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad, 
 Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad. 
 In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies, 
 
POPE 189 
 
 Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies, 
 His wit all see-saw, between that and this ; 
 Now high, now low, now master up, now miss, 
 And he himself one vile antithesis." 
 
 Prologue to the Satires. 
 
 " Avert it, Heaven! that thou, my Gibber, e'er, 
 Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair ! 
 Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, 
 The needy poet sticks to all he meets, 
 Coach'd, carted, trod upon ; now loose, now fast, 
 And carried off in some dog's tail at last. 
 Happier thy fortunes ! like a rolling stone, 
 Thy giddy dulness still shall lumber on." 
 
 The Dunciad. 
 
 Vanity Insincerity. " After all, his great cause 
 Tor writing was literary vanity : he wished to be admired, and 
 nothing more ; his life was that of a coquette studying herself 
 in a glass, painting her face, smirking, receiving compliments 
 from anyone, yet declaring that compliments weary her, that 
 paint makes her dirty, and that she has a horror of affecta- 
 tion He was never frank, always acting a part ; he 
 
 aped the blase man, the impartial great artist ; a contemner 
 of the great, of kings, of poetry itself. . . . When we 
 read his correspondence we find that there are not more than 
 ten genuine letters. ... It seems that this kind of 
 talent is made for light verses. . . . To make pretty 
 speeches, to prattle with the ladies, to speak elegantly of their 
 chocolate or their fan, to jeer at fools, to criticise the last 
 tragedy, to be good at insipid compliments or epigrams this, 
 it seems, is the natural employment of a mind such as this, 
 but slightly impassioned, very vain, a perfect master of style, 
 as careful of his verses as a dandy of his coat." Taine. 
 
 " Pope was through his life ambitious of splendid acquaint- 
 ance. ... In his character may be discovered an appe- 
 tite to talk too frequently of his own virtues. ... It 
 
190 POPE 
 
 may be discovered that when he thinks himself concealed he 
 indulges the common vanity of common men, and triumphs 
 in those distinctions which he had affected to despise. 
 Pope had been flattered until he thought himself one of the 
 moving powers in the system of life. When he talked of lay- 
 ing down his pen, those who sat round him entreated and im- 
 plored ; and self-love did not suffer him to suspect that they 
 went away and laughed. . . . Pope may be said to write 
 always with his reputation in his head. . . . Next to the 
 pleasure of contemplating his possessions seems to be that of 
 enumerating the men of high rank with whom he was acquaint- 
 ed, and whose notice he loudly proclaims not to have obtained 
 by any practices of meanness or servility; a boast which was 
 never denied to be true. . . . It is evident that his own 
 importance swells often in his mind. . . . One of his 
 favorite topics is contempt of his own poetry. For this, if it 
 had been real, he would deserve no commendation : and in 
 this he was certainly not sincere, for his high value of himself 
 was sufficiently observed ; and of what could he be proud but 
 of his poetry? . . . He pretends insensibility to censure 
 and criticism, though it was observed by all who knew him 
 that every pamphlet disturbed his quiet, and that his extreme 
 irritability laid him open to perpetual vexation ; but he wished 
 to despise his critics, and therefore hoped that he did despise 
 them. . . . Pope was sufficiently a fool to fame, and his 
 fault was that he pretended to neglect it. . . . His scorn 
 of the great is too often repeated to be real ; as no man thinks 
 much of that which he despises ; and as falsehood is always in 
 danger of inconsistency, he makes it his boast at another time 
 that he lives among them. . . . When Pope murmurs at 
 the world, when he professes contempt of fame, when he speaks 
 of riches and poverty, of success and disappointment, with 
 negligent indifference, he certainly does not express his habit- 
 ual and settled sentiments, but either wilfully disguises his own 
 character, or, what is more likely, invests himself with tempo- 
 
POPE 19! 
 
 rary qualities, and sallies out in the colors of the present mo- 
 ment. ' ' Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " Recent investigations have strengthened those suspicions 
 of his honesty which were common even among his contempo- 
 raries. . . . Speaking bluntly, indeed, ... we ad- 
 mit that Pope was, in a small way, one of the most consummate 
 liars that ever lived. . . . Pope's delight in artifice was 
 something unparalleled. . . . Our pleasure in reading 
 him is much counterbalanced by the suspicion that those 
 pointed aphorisms which he turns out in so admirably polished 
 a form may come only from the lips. . . . Thus we are 
 always pursued, in reading Pope, by disagreeable misgivings. 
 We don't know what comes from the heart and what from the 
 lips : when the real man is speaking, and when we are listen- 
 ing only to the old commonplaces skilfully vamped. . . . 
 One can hardly help smiling at his praises of his own hospi- 
 tality. . . . How far he succeeded in imposing upon 
 himself is, indeed, a very curious question, which can never 
 be fully answered. There is the strangest mixture of honesty 
 and hypocrisy. . . . He would instinctively snatch at a 
 lie even when a moment's reflection would have shown that 
 the plain truth would be more convenient, and therefore he 
 had to accumulate lie upon lie, each intended to patch up 
 some previous blunder." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " Pope practised on this, as on other occasions, a little 
 finessing ; which is the chief foible of his character. 
 What quality of thinking must that be [speaking of Pope's] 
 which allies itself so naturally with distortions of fact or of 
 philosophic truth ? . . . Pope, having no such internal 
 principle of wrath boiling in his breast, . . . was una- 
 voidably a hypocrite of the first magnitude when he affected 
 himself . . . to be in a dreadful passion with offenders 
 in a body. It provokes fits of laughter, in a man who knows 
 Pope's real nature, to watch him in the process of braving the 
 storm that spontaneously will not come, whistling like a mari- 
 
192 POPE 
 
 ner for a wind to fill his satiric sails, and pumping up into his 
 face hideous grimaces in order to appear convulsed with his- 
 trionic rage. Pope should have been counseled never to write 
 satire except on those evenings when he was suffering horribly 
 from indigestion. By this means the indignation would have 
 been ready-made. The rancor against all mankind would 
 have been sincere, and there would have needed to be no extra 
 expense in getting up steam. As it is, the short puffs of anger, 
 the uneasy snorts of fury, in Pope's satires give one painfully 
 the idea of a locomotive engine with unsound lungs. 
 Sudden collapses of the manufactured wrath, sudden oblivion 
 of the criminal, announce that Pope's passion is always coun- 
 terfeit. . . . Truth, even of the most appreciable order, 
 truth of history, goes to wreck continually under the perversi- 
 ties Pope's satire applied to celebrated men ; and as to the 
 higher truth of philosophy, it was still less likely to survive 
 amongst the struggles for striking effects and startling con- 
 trasts. . . . The key to his failure throughout this whole 
 satire section [satires on woman] ... is simply that not 
 one word is spoken in sincerity of heart or with any vestige 
 of self-belief. . . . The malignity [against women] was 
 not real as indeed nothing was real but a condiment for 
 hiding insipidity. ... Pope, in too many instances, for 
 the sake of some momentary and farcical effect, deliberately 
 assumes the license of a liar. He adopts the language of moral 
 indignation where we know that it could not possibly have 
 existed, seeing that the story to which this pretended indig- 
 nation is attached was, to Pope's knowledge, a pure fabrica- 
 tion. . . . That Pope killed himself by potted lampreys 
 . . . I greatly doubt ; but if anything inclines me to be- 
 lieve it, chiefly it is the fury of his invectives against epicures 
 and gluttons. What most of all he attacked as a moralist was 
 the particular vice which most of all besieged him. 
 He writes with a showy air of disparaging riches, of doing 
 homage to private worth, of honoring patriotism, and so on 
 
POPE 193 
 
 through all the commonplaces of creditable morality. But, 
 in the midst of this surface display, and in defiance of his 
 ostentatious pretensions, Pope is not in any deep or sincere 
 sense a moral thinker ; and in his own heart there was a mis- 
 giving, not to be silenced, that he was not. . . . Here, 
 however [in his satires and moral epistles], most eminently it 
 is that the falseness and hypocrisy which besieged his literary 
 career have made themselves manifest. . . . Pope, in the 
 midst of actual fidelity to his church, was at heart a traitor 
 in the very oath of his allegiance to his spiritual mistress he 
 had a lie upon his lips, scoffed at her whilst kneeling in hom- 
 age to her pretensions, and secretly foreswore her doctrines 
 whilst suffering insults in her service. . . . But upon far 
 more subjects than this Pope was habitually false in the qual- 
 ity of his thoughts, always insincere, never by any accident 
 in earnest, and consequently many times caught in ruinous 
 self-contradiction. . . . But if the reader is shocked with 
 Pope's false reading of phenomena where not the circum- 
 stances so much as the construction may be challenged, what 
 must he think of those cases in which downright facts and in- 
 cidents the most notorious have been outrageously falsified 
 only in obedience to a vulgar craving for effect in the dramatic 
 situations, or by way of pointing a moral for the stimulation 
 of torpid sensibilities ? . . . [In describing the death of 
 the Duke of Buckingham.] But Pope was at his wit's end for 
 a striking falsehood. He needed for a momentary effect some 
 tale of a great lord, once fabulously rich, who had not left 
 himself the price of a halter or of a pauper's bed. And thus, 
 for the sake of extorting a stare of wonderment from a mob of 
 gaping readers he did not scruple to give birth and currency 
 to the grossest of legendary fables. . . . Such shame 
 [from personal falsehoods] would settle upon every page of 
 Pope's satires and moral epistles, oftentimes upon every coup- 
 let, if any censor, armed with an adequate knowledge of the 
 facts, were to prosecute the inquest. And the general impres- 
 13 
 
194 POPE 
 
 sion from such an inquest would be that Pope never delineated 
 a character nor uttered a sentiment nor breathed an aspiration 
 which he would not willingly have recast, have retracted, have 
 abjured or trampled under foot with the curses assigned to 
 heresy, if by such an act he could have added a hue of brill- 
 iancy to his coloring or a new depth to his shadows. There 
 is nothing he would not have sacrificed, not the most solemn 
 of his opinions nor the most pathetic memorial from his per- 
 sonal experiences, in return for a sufficient consideration 
 which consideration meant always with him poetic effect. 
 Simply and constitutionally, he was incapable of a 
 sincere thought or a sincere emotion. . . . And he was 
 evermore false, not as loving or preferring falsehood, but as 
 one who could not in his heart perceive much real difference 
 between what people affected to call falsehood and what they 
 affected to call truth. ... To look at a pale, dejected fel- 
 low-creature creeping along the highway and to have reason 
 for thinking that he has not tasted food since yesterday 
 . . . in Pope, left to his spontaneous nature, such a sight 
 and such a thought would have moved only fits of laughter. 
 . . . Still, he was aware that some caution was requisite in 
 giving public expression to such feelings. Accordingly, when 
 he came forward in gala dress as a philosopher, he assumed the 
 serene air of one upon whom all such idle distinctions as rich 
 and poor were literally thrown away. . . . To a just ap- 
 preciation of Pope's falseness, levity, and self-contradiction it 
 is almost essential that a reader should have studied him with 
 the purpose of becoming his editor." De Quincey. 
 
 " Pope seems to refine them [his satirical portraits] in his 
 own mind and to make them out just what he pleases, till 
 they are not real characters but the mere drivelling effusions 
 of his spleen and malice. Pope describes the thing and then 
 goes on describing his own description till he loses himself in 
 verbal repetitions." William Hazlitt. 
 
POPE 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Well, if it be my time to quit the stage, 
 Adieu to all the follies of the age ! 
 I die in charity with fool and knave, 
 Secure of peace at least beyond the grave. 
 I've had my purgatory here betimes, 
 And paid for all my satires, all my rhymes. 
 
 With foolish pride my heart was never fired, 
 
 Nor the vain itch to admire or be admired ; 
 
 I hoped for no commission from his grace ; 
 
 I bought no benefice, I begged no place." Satires. 
 
 " Friend to my life ! (which did not you prolong, 
 The world had wanted many an idle song). 
 What drop or nostrum can this plague remove ? 
 Or which must end me, a fool's wrath or love ? 
 A dire dilemma! either way I'm sped, 
 If foes, they write if friends, they read me dead. 
 Seized and tied down to judge, how wretched I ! 
 Who can't be silent, and who will not lie." 
 
 Prologue to the Satires. 
 
 " From me, what Virgil, Pliny may deny, 
 Manilius or Solimus shall supply : 
 For Attic phrase in Plato let them seek, 
 I poach in Suidas for unlicensed Greek. 
 In ancient sense if any needs will deal, 
 Be sure I give them fragments, not a meal ; 
 What Gellius or Stobaeus hash'd before, 
 Or chewed my blind old Scholiasts o'er and o'er 
 The critic eye, that microscope of wit, 
 Sees hairs and pores, examines bit by bit." 
 
 The Dunciad. 
 
 " Heroes and kings ! your distance keep : 
 In peace let one poor poet sleep, 
 Who never flattered folks like you : 
 Let Horace blush, and Virgil too." 
 
 For One Who Would Not be Buried 
 tn Westminster Abbey. 
 
196 POPE 
 
 8. Elegance BrillianceGracefulness. -" Pope is 
 the incarnation of the literary spirit. He is the most com- 
 plete representative in our language of the intellectual in- 
 stincts which find their natural expression in pure literature. 
 He was an artist of unparalleled excellence in his 
 own department." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " Within his narrow circle how much, and that how ex- 
 quisite, was contained ! What discrimination, what wit, 
 what delicacy, what fancy, what elegance of thought ! . . . 
 The ' Rape of the Lock ' is the most exquisite specimen of 
 filigree work ever invented." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " What grace, what taste, what promptitude in feeling, 
 how much justness and what perfection did he show in ex- 
 pressing himself ! . . . We see . . . what care and 
 what elegance he introduced into his varied epistolary inter- 
 course." St. Beuve. 
 
 " The ' Rape of the Lock ' stands forth in the classes of liter- 
 ature as the most exquisite example of ludicrous poetry. With 
 elegance of description and justness of precept, he had 
 now exhibited boundless fertility of invention." Samuel 
 Johnson. 
 
 " Pope is a representative of fine literature in general. 
 . . . In the ' Rape of the Lock ' there is a game of cards 
 played and played with a brilliancy of effect and felicity of 
 selection, applied to the circumstances, which make it a sort 
 of gem within a gem. . . . The true pretensions of Pope 
 are sustained as the most brilliant writer of his own class in 
 European literature." De Quincey. 
 
 " In Pope we have the constant effort to condense, to con- 
 centrate meaning. The thought has been turned over and 
 over, till it is brought out finally with a point and finish 
 which themselves elicit admiration. Sometimes, but rarely, 
 does the severity of the writer's taste allow him to overpoint 
 what he wishes to say and to let the epigram run away with 
 him." Mark Pattison. 
 
POPE IQ7 
 
 " When the vast number of his couplets are considered, 
 their fastidious correctness is truly astonishing." H. T. 
 Tuckerman. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, 
 The proper study of mankind is Man. 
 Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, 
 A being darkly wise and rudely great ; 
 With too much knowledge for the sceptic side, 
 With too much weakness for the stoic's pride, 
 He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest ; 
 In doubt to deem himself a god or beast ; 
 In doubt his mind or body to prefer ; 
 Born but to die and reasoning but to err." 
 
 Essay on Man. 
 
 " 'Tis hard to say, if greater want of skill 
 Appear in writing or in judging ill ; 
 But, of the two, less dangerous is the offence 
 To tire our patience than mislead our sense. 
 Some few in that, but numbers err in this, 
 Ten censure wrong, for one who writes amiss ; 
 A fool might once himself alone expose, 
 Now one in verse makes many more in prose." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 "'Tis from high life high characters are drawn ; 
 A saint in crape is twice a saint in lawn ; 
 A judge is just, a chancellor juster still ; 
 A gownman learned ; a bishop, what you will ; 
 Wise, if a minister ; but, if a king, 
 More wise, more learn'd, more just, more ev'rything." 
 
 Moral Essays. 
 
 Q. Delicate Skill in Criticism. " If he had an ex- 
 cessive hatred of stupid authors, he admired the good and 
 the great ones all the more. . . . No example proves to 
 us better than his own how much the faculty of a sensitive, 
 
198 POPE 
 
 delicate critic is an active faculty. He who has nothing to 
 express neither feels nor perceives in such a manner. 
 When one is a critic to this extent, it is because one is a 
 poet. . . . Pope has defined and chalked out the fine 
 part of the true critic in many passages full of nobleness and 
 fire. ... No one, perhaps, has been conscious of lit- 
 erary stupidity and suffered from it in as high a degree as 
 Pope." /. Beuve. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Poets, like painters, thus, unskilFd to trace, 
 
 The naked nature and the living grace, 
 
 With gold and jewels cover every part, 
 
 And hide with ornaments their want of art. 
 -^True wit is nature to advantage dress'd ; 
 
 What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed ; 
 
 Something whose truth, convinced at sight we find, 
 
 That gives us back the image of our mind. 
 
 As shades more sweetly recommend the light, 
 
 So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit. 
 
 For works may have more wit than does 'em good, 
 
 As bodies perish through excess of blood." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 " In all debates where critics bear a part, 
 Not one but nods, and talks of Jonson's art, 
 Of Shakespeare's nature, and of Cowley's wit ; 
 How Beaumont's judgment checked what Fletcher writ ; 
 How Shadwell hasty, Wycherley was slow ; 
 But, for the passions, Southern sure and Rowe. 
 These, only these, support the crowded stage, 
 From eldest Heywood down to Gibber's age." 
 
 Imitations of Horace. 
 
 " But most by numbers judge a poet's song, 
 
 And smooth or rough, with them, is right or wrong ; 
 In the bright Muse, though thousand charms conspire, 
 Her voice is all these tuneful fools admire ; 
 
POPE 199 
 
 Who haunt Parnassus but to please their ear, 
 Not mend their minds ; as some to church repair, 
 Not for the doctrine but the music there. 
 These equal syllables alone require, 
 Though oft the ear the open vowels tire ; 
 While expletives their feeble aid do join ; 
 And ten low words oft creep in one dull line ; 
 While they ring round the same unvaried chimes 
 With sure returns of still expected rhymes : 
 Where'er you find ' the cooling western breeze,' 
 In the next line, it ' whispers through the trees : ' 
 If crystal streams ' with pleasing murmurs creep,' 
 The reader's threaten'd (not in vain) with ' sleep ; ' 
 Then, at the last and only couplet fraught 
 With some unmeaning thing they call a thought, 
 A needless Alexandrine ends the song." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 10. Religious Faith Conventional Morality. 
 
 "Pope, wheresoever his heart speaks loudly, shows how deep 
 had been his early impressions from Christianity. ... It 
 is remarkable, also, that Pope betrays, in all places where he 
 has occasion to argue about Christianity, how much grander 
 and more faithful to that great theme were the subconscious 
 perceptions of his heart than the explicit commentaries of his 
 understanding. He, like so many others,. was unable to read 
 or interpret the testimonies of his own heart an unfathomea 
 deep, over which diviner agencies brood than are legible to 
 the intellect The cipher written on his heaven-visited heart 
 was deeper than his understanding could interpret." DC 
 Qutncey. 
 
 1 In Pope's writings ... he [the reader] will find 
 the very excellences after which our poets strive in vain . . . 
 and a morality infinitely more merciful, as well as more right- 
 eous, than the one now in vogue among the poetasters, by 
 honest faith in God. . . He went through doubt, 
 
 contradiction, confusion, to which yours are simple and light, 
 
200 POPE 
 
 and conquered. ... In all times and places, as far as 
 we can judge, the man was heart-whole, more and not less 
 righteous than his fellows. With his whole soul he hates what 
 is evil, as far as he can recognize it. With his whole soul he 
 loves what is good, as far as he can recognize that. With his 
 whole soul believes that there is a righteous and good God, 
 whose order no human folly or crime can destroy ; and he 
 will say so ; and does say it, clearly, simply, valiantly, rev- 
 erently, in his ' Essay on Man. ' . . . There were in that 
 diseased, sensitive cripple no vain repinings, no moon-struck 
 howls, no impious cries against God : ' Why hast thou made 
 me thus ? ' To him, God is a righteous God, a God of or- 
 der." Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " Pope was ... in his way, as fair an embodiment 
 as we could expect of that ' plain living and high thinking ' 
 of which Wordsworth regretted the disappearance. 
 A tolerant, reverent, and kindly heart." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 '* His letters and prose writings give a very favorable idea 
 of his moral character in all respects. ... If I had to 
 choose, there are one or two persons and but one or two 
 that I should like to have been better than Pope ! " William 
 Hazhtt. 
 
 "' His filial piety and steadiness in his friendships are 
 publicly attested, and his many private charities are equally 
 well ascertained." Mark Pattison. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " All are but parts of one stupendous whole, 
 Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 
 That, changed through all, and yet in all the same, 
 Great in the earth, as in the ethereal frame ; 
 Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 
 Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees, 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent; 
 
POPE 201 
 
 Jreathes in our soul, informs our mortal part, 
 As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
 As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns 
 As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : 
 To Him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
 He fills, He bounds, connects, and equals all." 
 
 Essay on Man. 
 
 " To each unthinking being, Heaven, a friend, 
 Gives not the useless knowledge of its end : 
 To man imparts it, but with such a view 
 As, while he dreads it, makes him hope it too : 
 The hour conceal'd, and so remote the fear, 
 Death still draws nearer, never seeming near. 
 Great standing miracle ! that Heaven assign'd 
 Its only thinking thing this turn of mind." 
 
 Essay on Man. 
 
 " Father of all ! in every age, 
 
 In every clime adored, 
 By saint, by savage, and by sage, 
 Jehovah, Jove, or Lord ! 
 
 Save me alike from foolish pride 
 
 Or impious discontent 
 At aught thy wisdom has denied 
 
 Or aught thy goodness lent. 
 Teach me to feel another's woe, 
 
 To hide the fault I see ; 
 That mercy I to others show, 
 
 That mercy show to me." 
 
 The Universal Prayer. 
 
 II. Erudition Wide Learning. "He read only to 
 store his mind with facts and images, seizing all that his 
 authors presented with undistinguishable voracity and with 
 an appetite for knowledge too eager to be nice. . . . 
 The ' Essay on Criticism ' displays such extent of compre- 
 hension, such nicety of distinction, such acquaintance with 
 
2O2 POPE 
 
 mankind, and such knowledge both of ancient and modern 
 learning as are not often attained by the maturest age and 
 longest experience. . . . His frequent references to his- 
 tory, his allusions to various kinds of knowledge, and his 
 images selected from art and nature, with his observations on 
 the operations of the mind and the modes of life, show an in- 
 telligence perpetually on the wing, excursive, vigorous, and 
 diligent, eager to pursue knowledge and attentive to retain 
 it. ... These benefits of nature he improved by in- 
 cessant and unwearied diligence; he had recourse to every 
 source of intelligence, and lost no opportunity of informa- 
 tion. ' ' Samuel Johnson. 
 
 " The fact is, Pope's curiosity was too inordinate his desire 
 to know everything all at once too strong to admit of the de- 
 lay of learning a foreign language ; and he was consequently 
 a reader of translations. . . . He was, as a boy, a simply 
 ferocious reader, and was acquainted with the contents of the 
 great poets of both antiquity and the modern world. His 
 studies, at once intense, prolonged, and exciting, injured his 
 feeble health, and made him the life-long sufferer he was." 
 Augustine Birr ell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 When first young Maro, in his boundless mind, 
 A work to outlast immortal Rome design'd, 
 Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, 
 And but from nature's fountain scorn'd to draw : 
 But when to examine every part he came, 
 Nature and Homer were, he found, the same. 
 Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold design : 
 And rules as strict his labour'd work confine 
 As if the Stagyrite o'erlooked each line. 
 Learn hence for ancient rules a just esteem ; 
 To copy nature is to copy them." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
20 3 
 
 " At length Erasmus, that great injured name, 
 (The glory of the priesthood and the shame !) 
 Stemmed the wild torrent of a barbarous age, 
 And drove those holy vandals off the stage. 
 But see ! each Muse, in LEO'S golden days, 
 Starts from her trance, and trims her withered bays. 
 Rome's ancient genius, o'er its ruins spread, 
 Shakes off the dust, and rears his reverend head. 
 Then sculpture and her sister-arts revive ; 
 Stones leap'd to form, and rocks began to live ; 
 With sweeter notes each rising temple rung ; 
 A Raphael painted, and a Vida sung. 
 Immortal Vida ! on whose honoured brow 
 The poet's bays and critic's ivy grow : 
 Cremona now shall ever boast thy name, 
 As next in place to Mantua, next in fame ! " 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 12. Fragmentariness Lack of Logical Se- 
 quence. " Of all the poets that have practised reasoning 
 in verse, Pope is the most inconsequential in the deduction of 
 his thoughts and the most severely distressed in the effort to 
 effect or to explain the dependency of their parts. There are 
 not ten consecutive lines in Pope unaffected by this infirmity. 
 All his thinking proceeded by insulated and discontinuous 
 jets ; and the only resource for him, or chance of even seem- 
 ing correctness, lay in the liberty of stringing his aphoristic 
 thoughts like pearls, having no relation to each other but that 
 of contiguity. . . The ' Essay on Man ' sins chiefly 
 
 by want of a central principle and by want, therefore, of all 
 coherency amongst the separate thoughts. The ' Essay on 
 Criticism ' is a collection of independent maxims, tied to- 
 gether into a fasciculus by the printer, but having no natural 
 order or logical dependency : generally so vague as to mean 
 nothing. . . . The ' Atossa ' is a mere chaos of incom- 
 patibilities, thrown together as into some witch's cauldron. 
 The witch, however, had sometimes an unaffected malignity, 
 
204 POPE 
 
 a sincerity of venom in her wrath, which acted chemically as 
 a solvent for combining the heterogeneous ingredients in her 
 kettle; whereas the want of truth and earnestness in Pope 
 leaves the incongruities in his kettle of description to their 
 natural incoherent operation on the reader. . . . [The 
 4 Essay on Man' is] an accumulation of diamond dust without 
 principles of coherency. ... It is, indeed, the realiza- 
 tion of anarchy ; and one amusing test of this may be found 
 in the fact that different commentators have deduced from it 
 the very opposite theories. . . . The Essay on Man ' 
 in one point resembles some doubtful inscriptions in ancient 
 forms of Oriental languages, which, being made up elliptically 
 of mere consonants, can be read into very different senses 
 according to the different sets of vowels which the particular 
 reader may choose to interpolate." De Quincey. 
 
 "The first thing which strikes us on a rapid survey of 
 Pope's writings is their fragmentary nature. . . . The 
 ' Essay on Man ' and all the satires, imitations, and other 
 essays are only disjointed members or scraps of one vast phil- 
 osophical work, which never saw the light. This fragmentary 
 character matters less to us because it is not his substance or 
 his general effect which we delight in in Pope but his details. 
 His best poems are bits of mosaic, which we admire the most 
 when we pull them to pieces, tessera by tessera, and analyze 
 their exquisite workmanship." Edmund Gosse. 
 
 11 He unluckily fills up the gaps in his logical edifice with 
 the untempered mortar of obsolete metaphysics, long since 
 become utterly uninteresting to men." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Some beauties yet no precepts can declare, 
 For there's a happiness as well as care. 
 Music resembles poetry : in each 
 Are nameless graces which no methods teach, 
 And which a master-hand alone can reach. 
 
POPE 205 
 
 If, where the rules not far enough extend, 
 
 (Since rules were made but to promote their end,) 
 
 Some lucky license answer to the full 
 
 The intent proposed, that license is a rule. 
 
 Thus Pegasus, a nearer way to take, 
 
 May boldly deviate from the common track." 
 
 Essay on Criticism. 
 
 " In lazy apathy let stoics boast 
 Their virtue fix'd ; 'tis fixed as in a frost ; 
 Contracted all, retiring to the breast ; 
 But strength of mind is exercise, not rest : 
 The rising tempest puts in act the soul ; 
 Parts it may ravage, but preserves the whole. 
 On life's vast ocean diversely we sail, 
 Reason the card, but passion is the gale ; 
 Nor God alone in the still calm we find, 
 He mounts the storm, and walks upon the wind.'' 
 
 Essay on Man. 
 
 13. Contempt for Womanhood.'' It is painful to 
 follow a man of genius through a succession of inanities de- 
 scending into absolute nonsense and of vulgar fictions some- 
 times terminating in brutalities. These are harsh words, but 
 not harsh enough by half as applied to Pope's gallery of fe- 
 male portraits. . . . The describer knows, as well as any 
 of us the spectators know, that he is romancing, . . . 
 and we cannot submit to be detained by a picture which, 
 according to the shifting humor of the poet, angry or laugh- 
 ing, is a lie where it is not a jest, is an affront to the truth 
 of nature where it is not confessedly an extravagance of 
 drollery. In a playful fiction we can submit with pleasure to 
 the most enormous exaggerations ; but then they must be of- 
 fered as such. These of Pope's are not so offered but as se- 
 rious portraits ; and in that character they affect us as odious 
 and malignant libels. . . . There is no truth in Pope's 
 satiric sketches of women not even colorable truth ; but if 
 
206 POPE 
 
 there were, how frivolous, how hollow, to erect into solemn, 
 monumental protestations against the whole female sex what, 
 if examined, turn out to be pure casual eccentricities or else 
 personal idiosyncrasies or else foibles shockingly caricatured, 
 but above all to be such foibles as could not have connected 
 themselves with sincere feelings of indignation in any ration- 
 al mind. . . . Pope's pretended portraitures of women 
 the more they ought to have been true, as professing 
 to be studies from life, the more atrociously they are false, 
 and false in the transcendent sense of being impossible. Heaps 
 of contradiction or of revolting extravagance do not ver- 
 ify themselves to our loathing incredulity because the artist 
 chooses to come forward with his arms akimbo, saying an- 
 grily, ' But I tell you, sir, these are not fancy pieces ! These 
 ladies whom I have here lampooned are familiarly known to 
 me; they are my particular friends.' ' De Quincey. 
 
 " In his epistle on the character of women, no one who has 
 ever known a noble woman, nay, J should almost say no one 
 who has ever had a mother or a sister, will find much to 
 please him. The climax of his praise rather degrades than 
 elevates. . . . His nature delighted more in detecting 
 the blemish than in enjoying the charm." Lowell. 
 
 " Contempt veiled under the show of deference, a mockery 
 of chivalry, its form without its spirit this is the attitude as- 
 sumed towards women by the poet in this piece [' Rape of the 
 Lock']. This feeling towards woman is not the poet's idio- 
 syncrasy; here he is but the representative of his age." 
 Mark Pattison. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " There Affectation, with a sickly mien, 
 Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen ; 
 Practised to lisp and hang the head aside, 
 Faints into airs and languishes with pride ; 
 On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, 
 
POPE 
 
 207 
 
 Wrapt in a gown, for sickness and for show. 
 The fair ones feel such maladies as these, 
 When each new night-dress gives a new disease." 
 
 The Rape of the Lock. 
 
 " She [Queen Caroline] wears no colours (sign of grace) 
 On any part except her face ; 
 All white and black beside : 
 Dauntless her look, her gesture proud, 
 Her voice theatrically loud, 
 And masculine her stride. 
 
 So have I seen in black and white 
 A prating thing, a magpie hight, 
 
 Majestically stalk : 
 A stately worthless animal, 
 That plies the tongue and wags the tail, 
 
 All flutter, pride, and talk." Artemisia. 
 
 "Ladies, like variegated tulips, show; 
 
 'Tis to their changes half their charms we owe ; 
 Fine by defect and delicately weak, 
 Their happy spots the nice admirer take. 
 'Twas thus Calypso once each heart alarm'd, 
 Awed without virtue, without beauty charm'd ; 
 Her tongue bewitch'd as oddly as her eyes ; 
 Less wit than mimic, more a wit than wise. 
 Strange graces still and stranger flights she had, 
 Was just not ugly, and was just not mad ; 
 Yet ne'er so sure our passion to create, 
 As when she touched the brink of all we hate." 
 
 Epistle to a Lady. 
 
BURNS, 1759-1796 
 
 Biographical Outline. Robert Burns, born at Allo- 
 way, Scotland, January 25, 1759 ; his father, a nursery gar- 
 dener, spelled his name Burness or Burnes ; Burns attends a 
 school at Alloway Mill in his sixth year, and soon afterward 
 enters a private school set up by his father and four neigh- 
 bors ; in 1766 his father takes a poor farm at Mount Oliphant, 
 two miles away, and the school attendance of Burns and his 
 brother Gilbert becomes irregular ; they are taught thereafter 
 chiefly by their father in 1772 Robert attends a school at 
 Dalrymple; he improves his writing, and is in a school at Ayr 
 for three weeks during the summer of 1773, where he learns a 
 bit of French ; at thirteen he is threshing corn, and at fifteen 
 is his father's chief laborer ; he learns many popular legends 
 from an old woman neighbor, and borrows and reads several 
 biographical and theological books ; he reads also the Specta- 
 tor, Pope's translation of the " Iliad," and some of the works 
 of Smollett, Ramsay, and Fergusson ; he picks up French 
 readily, reads "Telemaque" and tries Latin, though with 
 little success ; his literary talents attract the attention of the 
 neighbors, and his father prophesies that Robert will do some- 
 thing extraordinary; his first poem, "Handsome Nell," is 
 composed in the autumn of 1775, and was addressed to a fel- 
 low-laborer in the fields. 
 
 In 1777 his father removes to a larger farm at Lochlea, 
 farbolton, while Robert goes to live with an uncle at Balloch- 
 neil, where he studies surveying at a school in the neighbor- 
 ing village of Kirkeswold ; here he meets certain jovial smug- 
 glers, learns to " fill his glass," falls in love with " a charming 
 fillette," scribbles verses and defeats his school-master in a 
 
 208 
 
BURNS 209 
 
 debate when rashly challenged by the latter ; on his return 
 to the farm at Lochlea he reads Thompson, Shenstone, Sterne, 
 and Ossian ; while at Lochlea he writes "Winter," "The 
 Death of Poor Maillie," "John Barleycorn," and other 
 songs; in 1780 he joins a "Bachelor's Club" at Tarbolton, 
 where he debates on love, friendship, etc.; he falls in love 
 with Ellison Begbie, daughter of a neighboring farmer, who 
 is the " Mary Morison " of his poems, but he is rejected by 
 her on his departure for Irvine, whither he goes in the sum- 
 mer of 1781 to enter a flax-dressing business with a relative of 
 his mother's. 
 
 At Irvine he forms a friendship with Richard Brown, a 
 sailor, who encourages him to "endeavor at the character of 
 a poet," but also leads him into vice; while he is carousing, 
 on January i, 1782, the flax-dressing shop takes fire and is 
 destroyed ; Burns thereupon returns to Lochlea, and lives for 
 awhile frugally and temperately; in April, 1783, he begins a 
 commonplace book, which he continues at intervals through 
 many years ; in 1781 he had joined a Masonic lodge at Tar- 
 bolton and he remained an enthusiastic Mason during life ; 
 Burns's father, a devout Presbyterian and the author of a 
 little " Manual of Religious Belief," died February 13, 1784; 
 with his brother Gilbert, Burns saves enough by litigation 
 over his father's lease to start a farm of one hundred and 
 eighteen acres at Mossgiel, near Mauchline, where they settle 
 in 1784 as subtenants of the writer Gavin Hamilton, who be- 
 comes a warm friend of Burns ; Burns becomes known to the 
 educated men of Mauchline and Kilmarnock, writes more 
 verses, is severely ill, and writes several lines expressive of 
 penitence, but soon becomes the father of an illegitimate 
 child; his brother Gilbert suggests that the "Epistle to 
 Davie," written in January, 1785, will " bear printing ; " he 
 writes the two epistles to John Lapraik in April, 1785, and 
 "Death and Dr. Hornbrook " about the same time; Dr. 
 Hornbrook is John Wilson, then a village apothecary. 
 14 
 
210 BURNS 
 
 Burns throws himself enthusiastically into the theological 
 struggle then raging between the " Auld Licht " and the 
 " New Licht " parties, during which his landlord and friend 
 Hamilton was twice tried for neglecting Sunday ; in connec- 
 tion with this controversy Burns writes his " Twa Herds" 
 about April, 1785 ; it is circulated in manuscript, as is 
 " Holy Willie's Prayer," written about the same time; dur- 
 ing 1785 he writes also his "Holy Fair" and his " Cotter's 
 Saturday Night," which describes his father's daily devotions; 
 Burns succeeded his father as head of the family, and is said 
 to have prayed most impressively; while at Mossgiel, 1785- 
 86 he writes also the "Address to the Deil," "The Jolly 
 Beggars," "Twa Dogs," "A Vision," "A Dream," "Hal- 
 loween," "To a Mouse," " To a Mountain Daisy," and 
 various songs ; meantime he has fallen in love with Jean Ar- 
 mour, daughter of an " Auld Licht " master mason of Mauch- 
 line, and in the spring of 1786, when she is about to become 
 the mother of a child by Burns, he gives her, according to the 
 morals and customs of his class, a written acknowledgment 
 that she is his wife ; her father declares that the marriage must 
 be dissolved, and she surrenders the document, thinking, as 
 did her friends and advisers, that this was equivalent to a di- 
 vorce ; Burns, disgusted, resolves to emigrate and secure a 
 position as overseer of an estate in Jamaica on a salary of 
 ^"30 a year ; at Hamilton's advice he decides to publish his 
 poems, to obtain the necessary passage-money, and they are 
 printed in Kilmarnock in July, 1786; Burns' s $ friends sub- 
 scribed for three hundred and fifty copies ; five hundred and 
 ninety- nine were sold by August 22d, bringing him about 
 ^20 and a considerable reputation. 
 
 Still proposing emigration, he makes over the copyright of 
 his poems to his brother in favor of his illegitimate daughter ; 
 for a time he is compelled to dodge a warrant issued by 
 his wife's father, but he is at Mossgiel September 3, 1786, 
 when his wife gives birth to twins, who live but a short time ; 
 
BURNS 211 
 
 meantime he has become " betrothed," by an exchange of 
 Bibles, to Mary Campbell, daughter of a sailor from Dunoon, 
 whom he had met while she was a nursemaid in the family of 
 Hamilton; this passion is commemorated in Burns's " High- 
 land Lassie," his "Will Ye Go to the Indes, My Mary?" 
 his " To Mary in Heaven " (October, 1789), and his " High- 
 land Mary " (November, 1792), and it was the most endur- 
 ing of his life ; Mary Campbell died in October, 1786 ; Burns 
 receives a letter from Blacklock, the blind poet, praising his 
 poems and urging a second edition ; he is also encouraged by 
 Dugald Stewart, with whom he is invited to dine October 23, 
 1786, at the instigation of Mr. Mackenzie, a surgeon at Mauch- 
 line ; his printer at Kilmarnock refuses to take a second 
 edition without an advance of ^27, which Burns replies " is 
 out of my power; " a friend, Mr. Ballantyne of Ayr, offers to 
 loan the money, but advises Burns to seek a publisher in Ed- 
 inburgh ; just before going to Edinburgh he meets Mrs. Dun- 
 lop of Dunlop, who becomes his friend and correspondent 
 through life. 
 
 He leaves Mossgiel November 27, 1786, riding a borrowed 
 pony, and reaches Edinburgh the next day ; while in Edin- 
 burgh he visits the grave of Fergusson, to whom he erected a 
 monument in the following year, and meets Henry Erskine ; 
 Lord Glencairn, a cousin of Burns's friend Dr. Dalrymple, in- 
 duces his aristocratic friends to subscribe for a second edition 
 of Burns's poems, and Henry Mackenzie, the " Man of Feel- 
 ing," reviews them enthusiastically in the Lounger, calling 
 Burns a " heaven-taught ploughman;" the poems are also 
 favorably noticed in the Edinburgh Magazine, and Burns is 
 welcomed by all the literary celebrities in Edinburgh, includ- 
 ing the Duchess of Gordon, Robertson, Blair, and Adam Fer- 
 guson ; he also makes acquaintance with "less exhalted cir- 
 cles," and joins a convivial club called the " Crochallan 
 Fencibles," for which he writes verses not creditable to his 
 genius ; in the better social circles he shines as a conversation- 
 
212 BURNS 
 
 alist, and is noted for his " matchless eyes like coals ofliving 
 fire; " the second edition of his poems appears April 31, 1787, 
 and 2,800 are subscribed for ; eventually, the edition brings 
 Burns about ^500 ; in the spring of 1787 he enters into an 
 agreement to contribute Scotch songs to the collection then 
 in preparation, and in May a volume appears with two songs 
 by Burns ; for these and his many other songs he neither 
 asked nor received payment, writing them from purely patri- 
 otic motives; during the summer of 1787 he makes a tour, 
 inspecting several farms, and collects several songs; with 
 Robert Ainsley, a young writer, he visits Coldstream (where 
 he crosses the bridge, to be in England), Kelso, Jedburgh, 
 Alnwick, Workmath, Newcastle, Carlisle, and Dumfries, and 
 returns to Mauchline June Qth ; here, though disgusted at the 
 servility of her father in view of Burns's new fame, he renews 
 his old relations with Jean Armour. 
 
 After a month at Mauchline and a tour in the West High- 
 lands and Paisley, he visits Edinburgh, August 7th, and there 
 chums with one Nichol, a self-taught teacher at the High 
 School; with Nichol he starts, August 25th, on a tour to the 
 East Highlands, and visits Falkirk, Stirling, Crieff, Dankeld, 
 Blair, Dolwhinnie, through Shathsprey, Aviemore, Dalsie, 
 Kilmarnock, Inverness, Nairn, Farres, and Tocholers ; while 
 at Blair he is kindly received by the Duke of Athole ; he re- 
 turns by Aberdeen, Montrose, and Perth, and reaches Edin- 
 burgh September 16, 1786 ; later in the same year he makes 
 another tour in the East Highlands, and visits Ramsay at 
 Menteith ; after his return to Edinburgh, in the fall of 1786, 
 he lodges at No. 2 St. James Square; he remains in Edinburgh 
 during the winter of 1786-87, vainly trying to get a settlement 
 with his publisher and continually talking of buying a farm ; 
 while there he meets a deserted widow, Mrs. M'Lehose, with 
 whom he carries on afterward a long correspondence under 
 the names, respectively, of Clarinder and Sylvander, and with 
 whom he contemplates marriage ; he leaves Edinburgh Feb. 
 
BURNS 
 
 ruary 16, 1787, and visits Glasgow on his way to Mauchline; 
 here he reconciles Jean Armour to her mother, who had 
 disowned her because of her continued relations with Burns ; 
 on receiving ^500 from his publisher, he loans 90 to his 
 brother, who is still struggling with the farm at Mossgiel. 
 
 In the spring of 1787 Burns receives a " qualification " for 
 a position as an excise officer ; he has continued his letters to 
 Mrs. M'Lehose, but about this time Jean Armour gives birth 
 to a second pair of twins, whose parentage Burns acknowl- 
 edges ; in August, 1787, he is legally married to Jean, they 
 are duly " admonished " in church, and Burns gives a guinea 
 to the poor; in apologizing to Mrs. M'Lehose, two years 
 later, he encloses in a letter to her his poem " Ae Fonde 
 Kiss, and Then We Sever ; " meantime he had bought a long 
 lease of a farm of one hundred acres, called Ellisland, six 
 miles from Dumfries; here he comes June 13, 1789, and 
 begins to build a house, his wife meanwhile staying at Mauch- 
 line, forty-six miles away; to her he refers in "O a' the 
 Airts the Wind Can Blow " and " O Were I on Parnassus 
 Hill ; " with his wife he settles in the new house in Decem- 
 ber, 1789 ; about this time he writes " I Hae a Wife o' My 
 Ain," " Auld Lang Syne," and " My Bonnie Mary ; " on 
 August 18, 1789, another child was born to him; soon af- 
 terward, owing to poor returns from his farm, he resolves to 
 make it a dairy farm and to leave -the superintendence of it 
 to his wife, while he can be earning something as an excise 
 officer ; he accordingly obtains an appointment as exciseman 
 for his district, an office bringing him a net income of about 
 40 ; his duties compelled him to ride two hundred miles a 
 week through ten parishes ; soon after his appointment he 
 writes ''To Mary in Heaven;" convivial meetings during 
 the autumn of 1789 are celebrated in " Willie Brew'd a Peck 
 o' Maut " and the " Whistle; " while " Hear, Land o' Cakes 
 and Brither Scots ' ' is addressed about the same time to Fran- 
 cis Grose, the artist and antiquarian ; Burns asks Grose to 
 
214 BURNS 
 
 make a drawing of Alloway Kirk, the burial-place of his 
 family, and Grose consents on condition that Burns write for 
 him a witch story ; as his part of the bargain Burns writes 
 " Tarn o' Shanter," composing it in one day as he walked by 
 the Nith; " Tarn " first appeared in Grose's "Antiquities 
 of Scotland" in April, 1791. 
 
 Soon after settling at Ellisland, Burns aids in establishing 
 a local library, and records are now extant showing that he 
 purchased for himself, about this time, many standard vol- 
 umes ; he always loved animals and detested field sports ; his 
 farming is a failure, and in the summer of 1791 he decides to 
 throw up his lease ; the death of Burns' s patron, Lord Glen- 
 cairn, in 1791, gives rise to his "Lament," but lessens the 
 poet's chances of promotion to the excise service ; he re- 
 ceives, however, an appointment as exciseman at Dumfries at 
 a salary of ^70, and removes thither in December, 1791, re- 
 siding first in what is now Bank Street and later in what is 
 now Burns Street; in April, 1791, Burns had been presented 
 by his wife with a third son and by one Anne Park with an 
 illegitimate daughter, whom Mrs. Burns promptly adopted. 
 
 Burns again visited Edinburgh, briefly, in December, 
 1791 ; at Dumfries he associates with the higher families, es- 
 pecially with that qf Walter Riddel, a convivialist, who had a 
 fine library and a wife of some poetic ability ; by reason of a 
 Jacobite epigram, written long before on a window in Stirling 
 Castle, and by some passages of his poems, Burns soon be- 
 comes suspected as a Jacobite in the intense political feeling 
 due to the French Revolution, now current ; while watching 
 an armed smuggling vessel in the Norway Firth, February 27, 
 1792, Burns composes "The Deil's Awa with the Excise- 
 man ; " he afterward leads a band of soldiers to the assault, 
 and is the first to board the ship ; the ship is condemned, 
 and Burns buys her guns for ^3 and sends them as a pres- 
 ent to the French legislative body, and escapes dismissal from 
 his office only by the intervention of his friend Graham; 
 
BURNS 215 
 
 he joins a secret club, and writes but suppresses a political 
 squib, "The Truce of Liberty;" he joins the volunteers 
 formed in 1795, and gives offence by toasting Washington as 
 a greater man than Pitt ; these acts lessen the possibility of 
 promotion to a supervisorship or a collectorship, which he 
 greatly desired ; although he leads an immoral life, he takes a 
 great interest in the education of his children ; he becomes an 
 honorary burgess of Dumfries and a member of the town li- 
 brary ; his "devil " is hard drinking at the country-houses of 
 gentlemen ; in the autumn of 1792 Burns accepts an invitation 
 to contribute Scotch songs to a collection then forming, the 
 melodies being first supplied ; among the songs so contrib- 
 uted is his " Scots Wha Hae Wi' Wallace Bled," composed 
 in July, 1793 ; during 1794-95 he writes several other songs 
 addressed to "Chloris, the Lassie Wi' the Lint-white Locks," 
 a Mrs. Whepole, for whom Burns's passion was purely polit- 
 ical ; his song " Oh, Wert Thou in the Cauld Blast," was ad- 
 dressed to a nurse during Burns's last illness. 
 
 In 1788, and again in 1794, he refuses to become a regular 
 contributor to London journals, although offered a salary each 
 time as large as his annual excise fees ; he also steadfastly 
 refuses to receive money for his songs, saying that they are 
 "either above or below the price ; " at Burns's death, how- 
 ever, the publisher of the songs voluntarily gave up his rights 
 in them in favor of the poet's family and also turned over to 
 the heirs his correspondence with Burns ; over one hundred 
 and eighty songs were contributed by Burns to the " Musical 
 Museum," though only forty-seven are said to be entirely his 
 own work ; Burns's total income at Dumfries amounted to 
 about 90, which enabled him to keep a servant and to live 
 in comfort; the death of his daughter in the autumn of 1795 
 greatly distresses him, and he is ill from October to Jan- 
 uary ; while recovering, he indulges in a carouse, sleeps out 
 of doors, is taken with rheumatic fever, and his health stead- 
 ily declines; he had been afflicted for some time with a 
 
2l6 BURNS 
 
 " flying gout," which he attributed to the follies of his youth ; 
 in his last days he is forced to ask loans of small amounts, 
 though his salary as exciseman is continued through the per- 
 formance of his duties by a friend ; he dies at Dumfries, July 
 2.1, 1796, and a posthumous son is born during the funeral- 
 service ; his family received ^700 from a subscription started 
 by friends and ^1,400 from an edition of Burns's poems 
 published in 1800 ; a mausoleum for Burns was erected at 
 Dumfries, and his remains were transported thither in Sep- 
 tember, 1815. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BURNS. 
 
 Stevenson, R. L., " Familiar Studies." New York, 1891, Scribner, 
 
 95-104. 
 Morley, J., "English Men of Letters" (Shairp). New York, 1879, 
 
 Harper, 186-205. 
 Carlyle, T., " Heroes and Hero- Worship." London, 1841, Chapman & 
 
 Hall, 249-315. 
 Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875, 
 
 Appleton, 287-339. 
 Carlyle, T., "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." London, 1847, 
 
 Chapman & Hall, 258-317. 
 Jeffrey, T., " Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, A. Hart, 
 
 6 : 335-347- 
 Shairp, J. C, "Aspects of Poetry," Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 164-194. 
 Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 
 
 Green, & Co., 164-172. 
 Hazlitt, W., " Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 
 
 170-189. 
 Wilson, J., "The Genius and Character of Burns." New York, 1872, 
 
 Macmillan, v. index. 
 Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1885, Moxon, 
 
 189-200. 
 Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Holt, 3 : 43- 6 - 
 
 Hawthorne, N., " Our Old Home." Boston, 1870, Osgood, 2 : 225-247. 
 Gilfillan, G., "Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1845, Tail, 
 
 I : 54-64. 
 
BURNS 
 
 Hoffmann, F A., " Poetry, Its Origin," etc. London, 1884, i : 502- 
 
 521. 
 Howitt, W., "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge, 379-441. 
 
 Keats, J., " Poems." New York, n. d., Crowell, 255. 
 Kingsley, Charles, "Works." London, 1880, Macmillan, 20 : 127-184. 
 Longfellow, H. W., " Ultima Thule " (nine stanzas addressed to Burns), 
 
 "Works." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin & Co , 397. 
 Montgomery, J., " Lectures on Poetry," etc. New York, 1833, Harper, 
 
 184-222. 
 Russell, A. P., "Characteristics." Boston, 1884, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 132-159. 
 Shairp, J. C, "On Poetic Interpretation of Nature." Boston, 1885, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 212-219. 
 Stuart, J. M., " Reminiscences and Essays." London, 1884, Low, 
 
 Marston & Co., 119-155. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1848, 
 
 Francis, 193-204. 
 Moir, D. M., " Sketches of Poetic Literature." Edinburgh, 1852, 
 
 Blackwood, 195-211. 
 Campbell, T., "Specimens of the English Poets," London, 1819. 
 
 Murray, 7 : 230-274. 
 Cunningham, A., "The Life and Land of Robert Burns." New York, 
 
 1841, Langley, 158-163. 
 Craik, G. L., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1864, 
 
 Scribner, 417-446 
 
 Emerson, R. W., "Miscellanies " Boston, 1870, Fields, 363-369. 
 Friswell, J. H., "Essays on English Writers." London, 1869, Lowe, 
 
 350-356- 
 Hannay, J., "Satires and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 198- 
 
 204 
 
 Wilson, J., "Essays." Edinburgh, 1861, Blackwood, 210-222. 
 Blackie, J. S., "Life of Robert Burns." London, 1888, Walter Scott, 
 
 155-176, v. index. 
 Gosse, E., "History of Eighteenth Century Literature." New York, 
 
 1889, Macmillan, v. index. 
 
 Wordsworth, W., " Poetical Works." New York, n. d., Crowell, 253. 
 Critic, 2 : 337-338 (Walt Whitman). 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 48 : 267-312 (Carlyle); 13: 249-276 (Jeffrey). 
 Quarterly Review \ i : 16-36 (Scott). 
 
 Atlantic, 44; 502-513 (J. C. Shairp); 6: 385-395 (Hawthorne). 
 Belgravia, 12 1481 (P. Fitzgerald). 
 
2 IS BURNS 
 
 North American Review, 143 : 427-435 (Walt Whitman). 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 7 : 249-252 (H. T. Tuckerman). 
 English Illustrated Magazine, 17 : 323-325 (A. Lang). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 \A. Sincerity Manliness Naturalness.- " The 
 
 ^'excellence of Burns is, indeed, among the rarest, whether in 
 poetry or prose ; but at the same time it is plain and easily 
 recognized. . . . The passion that is traced before us 
 has glowed in a living heart ; the opinion he utters has risen 
 in his own understanding and has been a light to his own 
 steps. He does not write from hearsay but from sight and 
 experience ; it is the scenes he has lived and labored amidst 
 that he describes. ... He speaks forth what is in him 
 because his heart is too full to be silent. ... It was a 
 curious phenomenon, in the withered, unbelieving, second- 
 hand eighteenth century, that of a hero starting up among 
 the artificial pasteboard figures and productions in the guise 
 of Robert Burns. ... A noble rough genuineness; 
 homely, rustic, honest ; true simplicity of strength ; with its 
 lightning fire, with its dewey pity. . . . We recollect 
 no poet of Burns's susceptibility who comes before us at the 
 first and abides with us to the last with such a total want of 
 affectation. He is an honest man and an honest writer. 
 A certain rugged sterling worth pervades whatever 
 Burns has written ; a virtue as of green fields and mountain 
 breezes dwells in his poetry ; it is redolent of natural life and 
 hardy natural men. . . . In his successes and his failures, 
 in his greatness and his littleness, he is ever clear, simple, true, 
 and glitters with no lustre but his own. . . . The chief 
 excellence of Burns is his sincerity and indisputable air of 
 truth. Here are no fabulous woes or joys ; no hollow fan- 
 tastic sentimentalities. ' ' Carlyle. 
 
 <l Consider the perfect naturalness, the entire spontaneity, 
 of his singing. It gushes from him as easily, as clearly, as 
 
BURNS 2IQ 
 
 serenely as the skylark's song does. In this he surpasses all 
 other song-composers. In truth, when he is at his best, when 
 his soul is really filled with his subject, it is not composing at 
 all ; the word is not applicable to him. He sings because he 
 cannot help singing because his heart is full and could not 
 otherwise relieve itself. . . . The characteristics of the 
 best songs of Burns are absolute truthfulness, truthfulness to 
 the great facts of life, truthfulness also to the singer's own feel- 
 ings what we mean by sincerity, second, perfect naturalness : 
 the feeling embodies itself in a form and language as natural 
 to the poet as its song is to the bird. This is what Pitt noted 
 when he said of Burns's poems that no verse since Shake- 
 speare's has so much the appearance of coming sweetly from 
 nature. I should venture to hint that in this gift of perfect 
 spontaneity Burns was even beyond Shakespeare. 
 At the basis of all his powers lay absolute truthfulness, intense 
 reality, truthfulness to the objects which he saw, truthfulness 
 to himself as the seer of them. . . . He expressed what 
 he saw, not in the stock phrase of books, but in his own ver- 
 nacular, the language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, 
 a vitality that tingled to the finger tips." Principal Shairp. 
 
 " Burns has one of the noblest qualities a man can possess 
 entire sincerity with himself. . . . And his only wish 
 was not to produce fine spun notions or to please the critics 
 but to touch the heart." Stopf or d Brooke. 
 
 " No poet since the Psalmist of Israel ever gave the world 
 more assurance of a man ; none lived a life more strenuous, 
 engaged in eternal conflict of the passions and by them over- 
 come ' mighty and mightily fallen.' "Andrew Lang. 
 
 "His character was remarkable for its manliness, its sin- 
 cerity, and its independence. . . . Where can we find 
 another poet with an imagination capable of so idealizing the 
 subject and yet so familiar with its details as to present a 
 picture as true as it is beautiful? " Emerson. 
 
 " After full retrospect of his works and life, the ' odd kind 
 
22O BURNS 
 
 chiel ' remains to my heart and brain as almost the tenderest, 
 manliest, dearest flesh-and-blood figure in all the streams and 
 clusters of by-gone poets. ... He treats fresh, often 
 coarse, natural occurrences, loves, persons, not like many 
 new and some old poets in a genteel style of gilt and china, or 
 at second or third removes, but in their own atmosphere, 
 laughter, sweat, unction." Walt Whitman. 
 " He kept his honesty and truth, 
 His independent tongue and pen, 
 And moved in manhood as in youth, 
 Pride of his fellow men. 
 
 A kind, true heart, a spirit high, 
 
 That could not fear and would not bow, 
 
 Were written in his manly eye 
 
 And on his manly brow." Fitz- Greene Halleck. 
 
 " There was a thorough and prevailing honesty about 
 Burns that freedom from disguise and simple truth of char- 
 acter, to the preservation of which rustic life is eminently 
 favorable. He was open and frank in social intercourse, and 
 his poems are but the sincere records and out-pourings of his 
 mature feelings. . . . Burns lost not the susceptibility of 
 his conscience nor the sincerity and manliness of his charac- 
 ter."^ T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " He had a real heart of flesh and blood beating in his 
 bosom you can almost hear it throb. He has made us as 
 well acquainted with himself as it is possible to be, has let out 
 the honest impulses of his native disposition, the unequal 
 conflict of the passions in his breast, with the same frankness 
 and truth of description." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " For the first time this man spoke as men speak, or rather 
 as they think, without premeditation, with a mixture of all 
 styles, familiar and terrible, hiding an emotion under a joke, 
 tender and jeering in the same place, apt to place side by side 
 
BURNS 221 
 
 tap-room trivialities and the high language of poetry. . . . 
 At last, after so many years, we escape from measured decla- 
 mation, we hear a man's voice. ... So indifferent was 
 he to rules, content to exhibit his feeling as it came to him 
 and as he felt it." Taine. 
 
 " Even in his most graceless sneer, his fault if fault it be 
 is that he cannot and will not pretend to respect that which 
 he knows to be unworthy of respect." Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Fresh as the flower, whose modest worth 
 He sang, his genius glinted forth 
 
 It showed my youth 
 
 How Verse may build a princely throne on humble 
 truth. 1 ' Wordsworth. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " God knows, I'm no the thing I should be, 
 Nor am I even the thing I could be, 
 But, twenty times, I rather would be 
 
 An atheist clean 
 
 Than under gospel colours hid be, 
 Just for a screen. 
 
 An honest man may like a glass, 
 An honest man may like a lass, 
 But mean revenge an' malice fause 
 
 He'll still disdain, 
 An' then cry zeal for Gospel laws 
 
 Like some we ken." 
 
 Epistle to the Rev. John Me Math. 
 
 " It's no in titles nor in rank, 
 
 It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank, 
 
 To purchase peace and rest : 
 It's no in making muckle mair, 
 It's no in books ; it's no in lear 
 
 To make us truly blest ; 
 
. 
 
 222 BURNS 
 
 . If happiness hae not her seat 
 
 And center in the breast, 
 We may be wise or rich or great, 
 But never can be blest." 
 
 Epistle to Davie. 
 
 11 All hail, Religion ! maid divine! 
 Pardon a muse sae mean as mine, 
 Who in her rough imperfect line 
 Thus dares to name thee ; 
 To stigmatize false friends of thine, 
 Can ne'er defame thee." 
 
 Epistle to the Rev. John McMath. 
 
 2. Tenderness Pathos. " Tears lie in him, and 
 consuming fire, as lightning lurks in the drops of the summer 
 cloud ; and yet he is sweet and soft, sweet as 
 
 the smile when fond lovers meet and soft as their parting 
 tear. ... A thousand battle-fields remain unsung ; 
 but the Wounded Hare has not perished without its me- 
 morial. . . . How his heart flows out in sympathy 
 over universal nature, and in her bleakest provinces discerns 
 a beauty and a meaning ! ' The Daisy ' falls not unheeded 
 under his ploughshare, nor the ruined nest of that ' wee, sleek- 
 it, cowrin' tim'rous beastie,' cast forth, after all its provident 
 pains, to thole the sleety dribble, and cranneuch cauld." 
 Carlyle. 
 
 "As for his tenderness the quality without which all 
 other poetic excellence is barren it gushes forth toward every 
 creature, animate and inanimate, with one exception, namely, 
 the hypocrite." Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " His forte was in humor and in pathos or rather in ten- 
 derness of feeling. . . . His tenderness is of two sorts ; 
 that which is combined with circumstances and characters of 
 humble and sometimes ludicrous simplicity, and that which 
 is produced by gloomy and distressful impressions acting on 
 
BURNS 223 
 
 a mind of keen sensibility. . . . The exquisite descrip- 
 tion of ' The Cotter's Saturday Night ' affords perhaps the 
 finest example of this the finest sort of pathos. . . . The 
 charm of the fine lines written on turning up a mouse's nest 
 with the plough will also be found to consist in the simple 
 tenderness of delineation. . . . The verses to a ' Moun- 
 tain Daisy,' though more elegant and picturesque, seem to 
 derive their chief beauty from the same tone of sentiment. 
 . . . Sometimes it is the brief and simple pathos of an old 
 ballad. . . . Sometimes it is animated with airy narra- 
 tive and adorned with images of the utmost elegance and 
 beauty. . . . Sometimes, again, it is plaintive and mourn- 
 ful, in the same strain of unaffected sympathy." Francis 
 Jeffrey. 
 
 " He speaks to the Devil, in his address to that personage, 
 as to an unfortunate comrade, a disagreeable fellow, but fallen 
 into trouble. . . . Burns pities, and that sincerely, a 
 wounded hare, a mouse whose nest was upturned by his 
 plough, a mountain daisy. Is there such a great difference 
 between man and beast and plant ? " Taine. 
 
 "In Burns the further widening of human sympathies is 
 shown in the new tenderness for animals. The birds, sheep, 
 cattle, and wild creatures of the wood and field fill as large a 
 space in the poetry of Burns as in that of Wordsworth and 
 Coleridge. . . . He transfers the depths of his personal 
 affection to natural objects, and speaks of them with often a 
 sudden tenderness and exquisite mournfulness of pity or as 
 quick sympathy with their joy." Stopford Brooke. 
 " We love him not for sweetest song, 
 Tho' never tone so tender." O. W. Holmes. 
 
 " With familiar tenderness he dwelt on the lower creatures, 
 felt for their sufferings, as if they had been his own, and 
 opened men's hearts to feel how much the groans o f creation 
 are needlessly increased by the indifference or cruelty of 
 man.;/. C. Shairp. 
 
224 BURNS 
 
 "It is not everyone who can perceive the sublimity of a 
 daisy or the pathos to be extracted from a withered thorn." 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 "It was this notable amount of backbone and force of arm, 
 sensibly felt in his utterances, which gave to his pathos and 
 tenderness such healthy grace and such rare freedom from 
 anything that savored of sentimentality. The Christian 
 element of pity also had a deep fount in his rich human heart, 
 and a tear of common blooded affinity was ever ready to be 
 dropt, not only over the sorrows of an injured woman, but 
 over the pangs of a hunted hare or the terror of a startled 
 field-mouse." John Stuart Blackie. 
 
 " Of all the men that ever lived, Burns was least of a senti- 
 mentalist. He was your true man of feeling. He did not 
 preach to Christian people of the duty of humanity to animals; 
 he spoke of them in winning words, warm from the manliest 
 breast, as his fellow-creatures, and made us feel what we owe. 
 . . . His nature was indeed human ; and the tenderness 
 and kindliness apparent in every page of his poetry and most 
 of all in his Songs cannot but have a humanizing effect on 
 all those exposed by the necessities of their condition to many 
 causes for ever at work to harden or shut up the heart. 
 With a rare power of pathos and artless eloquence, 
 which could invest a common daisy with human life and 
 interest and infuse into the breast of the hare, the mouse, or 
 the little bird, a microcosm of human feeling and emotion, 
 Burns, with no less poetic power and tenderness, but with 
 more practical philosophy, went down into the very heart of 
 the Scottish peasant and brought forth materials with which to 
 forma noble and a perfect man." John Wilson [Christo- 
 pher North.] 
 
BURNS 225 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie, 
 O, what a panic's in thy breastie ! 
 Thou need na start awa sae hasty, 
 
 Wi' bickering brattle ! fhurryj 
 I wad be laith to rin and chase thee, 
 
 Wi' murd'ring pattle ! [paddle] 
 
 I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
 Has broken Nature's social union, 
 An' justified that ill opinion 
 
 Which makes thee startle 
 At me, thy poor, earth-born companion, 
 
 An' fellow-mortal." Address To a Mouse. 
 
 " Why, ye tenants of the lake, 
 
 For me your watery haunts forsake ? 
 Tell me, fellow-creatures, why 
 At my presence thus you fly ; 
 Why disturb your social joys, 
 Parent, filial, kindred ties ? 
 Common friend to you and me, 
 Nature's gifts to all are free." 
 
 On Scaring' Some Water-Fowl. 
 
 " Go live, poor wanderer of the wood and field, 
 The bitter little that of life remains ; 
 No more the thickening brakes and verdant plains 
 To thee shall home or food or pastime yield. 
 
 Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest, 
 No more of rest, but now thy dying bed ! 
 The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, 
 The cold earth with thy bloody bosom prest." 
 
 On Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp By. 
 
 3. Vigor Spirit. " Burns expressed what he saw, not 
 in the stock phrases of books, but in his own vernacular, the 
 language of his fireside, with a directness, a force, a vitality, 
 
226 BURNS 
 
 that tingled to the fingertips, and forced the phrases of his 
 peasant dialect into literature, and made them forever classi- 
 cal. . . . Burns' s keenness of insight keeps pace with 
 his keenness of feeling. . . . Here was a man, a son of 
 toil looking out on the world from his cottage, on society 
 high and low, and on nature homely or beautiful, with the 
 clearest eye, a most piercing insight, . . . seeing to the 
 core all the sterling worth, nor less the pretence and hollow- 
 ness of the men he met, the humor, the drollery, the pathos 
 and the sorrow of human existence." -J. C. Shairp. 
 
 "Observe with what a fierce, prompt force he grasps his 
 subject, be what it may ! How he fixes, as it were, the full 
 image of the matter in his eyes ; full and clear in every linea- 
 ment ; and catches the real type and essence of it amid the 
 thousand accidents and superficial circumstances, no one of 
 which misleads him ! . . . Of the strength, the piercing 
 emphasis with which he thought, his emphasis of expression 
 may give a humble but the readiest proof. Who ever uttered 
 sharper sayings than his ; words more memorable, now by 
 their burning vehemence, now by their cool vigor and laconic 
 pith ? A single phrase depicts a whole subject, a whole 
 phase. We discern the brawny movements of a gigantic 
 though untutored strength, and can understand how, in con- 
 versation, his quick, sure insight into men may, as much as 
 aught else about him, have amazed the best thinkers of his 
 time and country. . . . If we look at his general force 
 of soul, his healthy robustness, every way, the rugged down- 
 rightness, penetration, generous valor, and manfulness that 
 was in him where shall we readily find a better-gifted man ? 
 . . . Burns is not more distinguished by the clearness 
 than by the impetuous force o v f his conceptions. ... In 
 fact, one of the leading features in the mind of Burns is this 
 vigor of his strictly intellectual perceptions." Carlyle. 
 
 " We may say of him without excess that his style was his 
 slave. Hence that energy so concise, so telling that a foreigner 
 
BURNS 227 
 
 is tempted to explain it by some special richness or aptitude 
 in the dialect he wrote. ... It was by his style and 
 not by his matter that he affected Wordsworth and the world. 
 They [his works] interest us not in themselves but 
 because they have passed through the spirit of so genuine and 
 vigorous a man. Such is the stamp of living literature, and 
 there was never any more alive than that of Burns." Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. 
 
 " The fire and fervor without which lyrical poetry is scarce 
 worthy of the name, Burns possessed in a high degree. . . . 
 He was emphatically a strong man ; there was, as Carlyle 
 says, ' a certain rugged sterling worth about him,' which 
 makes his songs as good as sermons sometimes, and sometimes 
 as good as battles. . . . But it is not simply fire from 
 within, consuming itself in the glow of some special pet en- 
 thusiasm, but it was a fire that went out contagiously and 
 seized whatever fuel it might find in the motley fair of the 
 largest human life. . . . Then again, the general vigor 
 of mind was as notable as his vigor of body ; he was as strong 
 in thought as intense in emotion." John Stuart Blackie. 
 
 ''Who can praise them [Burns' s poems] too highly, who 
 admire in them too much the humor, the scorn, the wisdom, 
 the unsurpassed energy and courage." Andrew Lang. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A fig for those by law protected ! 
 
 Liberty's a glorious feast ! 
 Courts for cowards were erected, 
 Churches built to please the priest. 
 
 Life is all a variorum, 
 
 We regard not how it goes ; 
 Let them cant about decorum, 
 
 Who have characters to lose." 
 
 The Jolly Beggars. 
 
228 BURNS 
 
 " The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last ; 
 The rattling show'rs rose on the blast ; 
 The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd ; 
 Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd ; 
 That night, a child might understand 
 The Deil had business on his hand. 
 
 Before him doon pours all his floods ; 
 The doubling storm roars thro' the woods ; 
 The lightnings flash from pole to pole ; 
 Near and more near the thunders roll." 
 
 Tarn O' Shanter. 
 
 " Though I canna ride in weell-booted pride, 
 And flee o'er the hills like a craw, man, 
 I can haud up my head wi' the best o' the breed, 
 Though fluttering ever so braw, man." 
 
 The Tarbolton Lasses. 
 
 4. Patriotism. Carlyle's estimate of the value of 
 'Burns's songs is hardly exaggerated, and yet, though in se- 
 verely straitened circumstances when he composed the most 
 and the best of these songs, Burns proudly refused to accept 
 any remuneration; and "he appears to have been taken at 
 his word by every one concerned." Burns wrote to his 
 friend Mrs. Dunlop: "Scottish scenes and Scottish stories 
 are the themes I could wish to sing. I have no dearer aim 
 than to have it in my power, unplagued by the routine of 
 business, for which heaven knows I am unfit enough, to make 
 leisurely pilgrimages through Caledonia ; to sit on the fields 
 of her battles; to wander on the romantic banks of her rivers ; 
 and to muse by the stately towers and venerable rums over 
 the honored abodes of her heroes. ' ' 
 
 "In no heart did the love of country burn with a warmer 
 glow than in that of Burns. 'A tide of Scottish prejudice,' 
 as he modestly calls this deep and generous feeling, ' had been 
 poured along ' his veins ; and he felt that it would boil there 
 until the flood-gates 'shut in eternal rest.' . . . But his 
 
BURNS 229 
 
 example in the fearless adoption of domestic subjects could 
 not but operate from afar. It seemed to him as if he could 
 do so little for his country, and yet he would have gladly 
 done all." Carlyle. 
 
 "He made the poorest ploughman proud of his station 
 and toil, since Bobbie Burns had shared and sung them. 
 He had longed from his boyhood to shed upon the 
 unknown streams of his native Ayrshire some of the power 
 which generations of minstrels had shed upon Yarrow and 
 Tweed. Burns in his poetry was not only the interpreter of 
 Scotland's peasantry, he was the restorer of her nationality. 
 Among these literary men in walked Burns, who, 
 with the instinct of genius, chose for his subject that Scottish 
 life which they ignored and for his vehicle that vernacular 
 which they despised, and who, touching the springs of long- 
 forgotten emotions, brought back on the hearts of his country- 
 men a tide of patriotic feeling to which they had long been 
 strangers." J. C. Shairp. 
 
 " His patriotism was of the true poetic kind intense ex- 
 clusive. Scotland and the climate of Scotland were to his 
 eyes the dearest in Nature Scotland and the people of Scot- 
 land were and had been such as to starve the flame of patriot- 
 ism. ... A peasant appeared and set himself to check 
 the creeping pestilence of this indifference. Whatever genius 
 has since been devoted to the illustration of the national man- 
 ners and sustaining thereby the national feeling of the people, 
 there can be no doubt that Burns will be remembered as the 
 founder and alas ! in his own person as the martyr of this ref- 
 ormation." -J. G. Lockhart. 
 
 *' To have recreated that national feeling, that deep and 
 unquenchable patriotism which has made Scotland, small and 
 poor, a force in the great universe, is no small work." Ma- 
 caulay. 
 
 " Burns is a thorough Scotchman the flavor of the soil can 
 be tasted in everything he wrote." Emerson. 
 
230 BURNS 
 
 "The special nationality of Scotch poetry is stronger in 
 Burns's poetry than in any of his predecessors, but it is also 
 mingled with a larger view of man than the merely national 
 one. ... He keeps himself throughout to Scottish sub- 
 jects ; his scenery is entirely Scottish, his love of liberty con- 
 centrates itself round Scottish struggles ; his muse is wholly 
 untravelled. . . . When the muse of Scotland appeared 
 to him, she bade him sing his own people ; her mantle was 
 adorned with the rivers, hills, and boroughs of Scotland, and 
 in her face was the character of Scotland's poets." Stopford 
 Brooke. 
 
 11 Another quality Burns possessed in an eminent degree, a 
 quality which tended to make him the idol of his countrymen, 
 and that was patriotism, a virtue which, as Carlyle remarks, 
 was, in the days of Hume and Robertson and Blair, anything 
 but common in the literary atmosphere of Scotland. . . -. 
 On one point there can be no controversy, the poetry of Burns 
 has had the most powerful influence in reviving and strength- 
 ening the national feelings of his countrymen. Amidst pen- 
 ury and labor, his youth fed on the old minstrelsy and tradi- 
 tional glories of his nation, and his genius divined that what 
 he felt so deeply must belong to a spirit that might lie smoth- 
 ered around him, but could not be extinguished, and that was 
 the spirit of patriotism. "John Stuart Blackie. 
 
 " The poor man, as he speaks of Robert Burns, always holds 
 up his head and regards you with an elated look. A tender 
 thought of the ' Cotter's Saturday Night ' or a bold thought 
 of ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' may come across him ; 
 and he who in such a spirit loves home and country, by 
 whose side may he not walk an equal in the broad eye of day 
 as it shines over our Scottish hills?" Professor Wilson 
 [Christopher North]. 
 
 " Burns is, in fact, the demigod, prophet, priest, and king 
 of Scotland. . . . This is, after all, the greatest of Burns's 
 poetical merits that he has Scotized poetry, . . . and 
 
BURNS 231 
 
 has drawn to him the hearts of his countrymen like the draft 
 of a roaring fiery furnace." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " O Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 
 
 For whom my warmest wish to Heaven is sent ; 
 Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 
 
 Be blest with health and peace and sweet content ! 
 
 And, Oh ! may Heaven their simple lives prevent 
 From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 
 
 Then, howe'er crown and coronets be rent, 
 A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
 And stand a wall of fire around their much-loved isle." 
 
 The Cotter's Saturday Night. 
 
 " Wild beats my heart to brace your steps, 
 
 Whose ancestors, in days of yore, 
 Through hostile ranks and ruin'd gaps 
 Old Scotia's bloody lion bore : 
 Even I who sing in rustic lore, 
 Haply my sires have left their shed, 
 
 And faced grim Danger's loudest roar, 
 Bold-following where your fathers led ! " 
 
 Address to Edinburgh. 
 
 " Wha for Scotland's King and law 
 Freedom's sword will strongly draw, 
 Free man stand, or free man fa', 
 Caledonian ! on wi* me ! " Bannockburn. 
 
 5. Broad Human Sympathy Moral Insight. 
 
 " No wonder the Scottish peasantry have loved Burns as per- 
 haps never people loved a poet. He not only sympathized 
 with the wants, the trials, the joys, the sorrows of their ob- 
 scure lot, but he interpreted these to themselves, and inter- 
 preted them to others, and too in their own language, made 
 musical and glorified by genius. . . . What flashes of 
 moral insight, piercing to the quick ! What random sayings 
 
232 BURNS 
 
 flung forth that have become proverbs in all lands mottoes 
 of the heart. ... He interpreted the lives, thoughts, 
 feelings, manners of the Scottish peasantry to whom he be- 
 longed, as they had never been interpreted before and never 
 can be again. . . . Of his instinctive knowledge of men 
 of all ranks there is no need to speak, for every line attests it. 
 . . . Of his songs, one main characteristic is that their 
 subjects, the substance they lay hold of, belongs to what is 
 most permanent in humanity those primary affections, those 
 permanent relations of life which cannot change while man's 
 nature remains what it is. In this they are wholly unlike the 
 songs which seize on the changing aspects of society. . . . 
 Happy as a singer Burns was in this, that his own strong nat- 
 ure, his birth, and all his circumstances, conspired to fix his 
 interest on the primary and permanent affections, the great 
 fundamental relations of life, which men have always with 
 them not on the social conventions and ephemeral modes, 
 which are here to-day, forgotten in the next generation. 
 . . . Burns' s sympathy and thoughts were not confined 
 to class and country ; they had something more catholic in 
 them, they reached to universal man." y. C. Shairp. 
 
 "All his religion, he says, came from the heart; and it 
 drove him when he thought of this poor people and their 
 hard lives, and how beautiful they often were with maternal 
 feeling ; when he thought how much they suffered and how 
 much was due to them, to refer the origin of their good to 
 God and to leave the righting of their wrongs to God. . . 
 Being thus himself poor . . . and having in him . . . 
 a heart to love and enjoy all beauty and to feel all that was hu- 
 man, and being insensibly influenced by the spirit of the time, 
 he threw into the tender and humorous song the sorrows and 
 affections of his own class, their religion and their passions, 
 their amusements and their toil, till all the world laughed and 
 wept with the Ayrshire ploughman." Stopford Brooke 
 
 " He carries us into the humble scenes of life, not to make 
 
BURNS 233 
 
 us dole out our tribute of charitable compassion to paupers 
 and cottagers, but to make us feel with them on equal terms, 
 to make us enter with them into their passions and interests 
 and share our hearts with them as with brothers and sisters of 
 the same species." Thomas Campbell. 
 
 "But observe him chiefly as he mingles with his brother 
 men ! What warm, all-comprehending fellow-feeling ; what 
 trustful, boundless love ; that generous exaggeration of the 
 object loved ! His rustic friend, his nut-brown maiden, are 
 no longer mean and homely, but a hero and a queen whom 
 he prizes as the paragons of Earth. . . . And thus over 
 the lowest provinces of man's existence he pours the glory 
 of his own soul. ... In hut and in hall as the heart 
 unfolds itself in the many-colored joy and woe of existence, 
 the name, the voice of that joy and woe is the name and 
 the voice which Burns has given them. Strictly speaking, 
 perhaps no [other] British man has so deeply affected the 
 thoughts and feelings of so many men as this solitary and 
 altogether private individual, with means apparently the hum- 
 blest. . . . We see in him the gentleness, the trembling 
 pity of a woman, with the deep earnestness, the force and pas- 
 sionate ardor of a hero. ... He has a resonance in his 
 bosom for every note of human feeling ; the high and the low, 
 the sad, the ludicrous, the joyful, are welcome in their turns 
 to his lightly-moved and all-conceiving spirit." Carlyle. 
 
 " What a gust of sympathy there is in him, sometimes flow- 
 ing out in by-ways hitherto unused, upon mice, flowers, and 
 the Devil himself; sometimes speaking plainly between hu- 
 man hearts; sometimes ringing out in exultation like a peal 
 of bells ! ' ' Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 " But still the music of his song 
 Rises o' er all elate and strong ; 
 
 Its master-chords 
 Are Manhood, Freedom, Brotherhood." 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
234 BURNS 
 
 " We praise him not for gifts divine, 
 
 His muse was born of woman, 
 His manhood breathes in every line 
 Was ever heart more human ? 
 
 We love him, praise him, just for this: 
 
 In every form and feature, 
 Through wealth and want, through woe and bliss, 
 
 He saw his fellow-creature." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " But who his human heart has laid 
 
 To Nature's bosom nearer ? 
 Who sweetened toil like him, repaid 
 To love a tribute dearer ? 
 
 Through all his tuneful art, how strong 
 
 The human feeling gushes ! 
 The very moonlight of his song 
 
 Is warm with smiles and blushes ! " Whittier. 
 
 " He is a human creature, only overflowing with the char- 
 acteristics of humanity. To him belong, in large measure, 
 the passions and the powers of his race. He professes no 
 exemption from the common lot. . . . Rarely and richly 
 were mingled in him the elements of human nature. His 
 crowning distinction is a larger soul ; and this he carried into 
 all things." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Burns had as deep an insight as ever man had into the 
 moral evils of the poor man's character, condition, and life. 
 . . . Not an occurrence in hamlet, village, or town, 
 affecting in any way the happiness of the human heart, but 
 roused as keen an interest in the soul of Burns and as genial a 
 sympathy as if it had immediately concerned himself and his 
 own individual welfare. . . . No poet ever lived more 
 constantly and more intimately in the hearts of a people. 
 . . . There is no other writer except Shakespeare who 
 
BURNS 235 
 
 shares to the same extent, notwithstanding he wrote in a pro- 
 vincial dialect, a like universal sympathy or the same uni- 
 versal appreciation." -James Grant Wilson. 
 
 " It is that language of the heart 
 
 In which the answering heart would speak, 
 Thought, word, that bids the warm tear start, 
 Or the smile light the cheek : 
 
 And his that music to whose tone 
 
 The common pulse of man keeps time, 
 
 In cot or castle's mirth or moan, 
 
 In cold or sunny clime." Fitz- Greene Halleck. 
 
 " Burns has made his appearance to convince the loftiest 
 of the noble and the daintiest of the learned, that wherever 
 human nature is at work, the eye of the poet may discover 
 rich elements of his art ; that over Christian Europe, at all 
 events, purity of sentiment and the fervor of passion may be 
 combined with sagacity of intellect, with shrewdness, humor, 
 and whatever elevates and delights the mind ; not more easily 
 amidst the most complicated transactions of the most polished 
 societies than in his 'huts where poor men lie.' " -J. G. 
 Lockhart. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Then gently scan your brother man, 
 
 Still gentler sister Woman ; 
 Tho' they may gang a kennie [trifle] wrang, 
 
 To step aside is human : 
 One point must still be greatly dark, 
 
 The moving Why they do it ; 
 And just as lamely can ye mark 
 
 How far, perhaps, they rue it. 
 
 Who made the heart, 'tis He alone 
 
 Decidedly can try us, 
 He knows each chord its various tone, 
 
 Each spring its various bias : 
 
236 BURNS 
 
 Then at the balance let's be mute, 
 
 We never can adjust it ; 
 What's done we partly may compute, 
 
 But know not what's resisted." 
 
 Address to the Unco Guid. 
 
 " To lie in kilns and barns at e'en, 
 
 When banes are crazed and bluid is thin, 
 
 Is doubtless great distress ! 
 Yet then content could make us blest ; 
 E'en then sometimes we'd snatch a taste 
 
 Of truest happiness. 
 The honest heart that's free frae a' 
 
 Intended fraud or guile, 
 However Fortune kick the ba* 
 
 Has aye some cause to smile." 
 
 Epistle to Davis. 
 
 " I've noticed, on our Laird's court-day, 
 An' mony a time my heart's been wae, 
 Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash, 
 How they mon thole a factor's snash : 
 
 I see how folks live that hae riches ; 
 
 But surely poor folks maun be wretches." 
 
 The Twa Dogs. 
 
 6. Scorn Indignation Ridicule. This most pow- 
 erful weapon in the hands of Burns was generally directed 
 against the cant and hypocrisy which his honest eyes saw too 
 clearly in all the ways of men and especially against hypocrisy 
 in religion. 
 
 " The indignation which makes verses, is, properly speak- 
 ing, an inverted love ; the love of some right, some worth, 
 some goodness, belonging to ourselves or others, which has 
 been injured and which this tempestuous feeling issues forth 
 to defend and avenge. ... Of the verses which indig- 
 nation makes, Burns has given us among the best that were 
 ever given." Carlyle. 
 
BURNS 237 
 
 " Since Voltaire, no literary man in religious matters was 
 more bitter or more jocose. . . . What he made fun of 
 was official worship; but as for religion, the language of the 
 soul, he was greatly attached to it." Taine. 
 
 " But never since bright earth was born 
 In rapture of the enkindling morn, 
 Might god-like wrath and sinlike scorn, 
 
 That was and is 
 
 And shall be while false weeds are worn, 
 Find words like his." 
 
 A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " Not Latimer nor Luther struck more telling blows against 
 false theology than did this brave singer. . . . His satire 
 has lost none of its edge. His musical arrows yet sing through 
 the air." Emerson. 
 
 " The first peculiarity is the undisciplined harshness and 
 acrimony of his invective. . . . His epigrams and lam- 
 poons appear to us, one and all, unworthy of him, offensive 
 from their extreme coarseness and violence, and contemptible 
 from their want of wit and brilliancy. They seem to have 
 been written not out of fierce and ungovernable anger. His 
 whole raillery consists in railing ; and his satirical vein dis- 
 plays itself chiefly in calling names and swearing. We say 
 this mainly with reference to his personalities. In many of 
 his more general representations of life and manners, there is 
 no doubt much that may be called satirical, mixed up with 
 admirable humor and description of inimitable vivacity." 
 Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " Insincerity and pretension completely disgusted him. 
 Scarcely does he betray the slightest impatience with his fel- 
 lows, except in expressing and ridiculing these traits. ' Holy 
 Willie's Prayer ' and a few similar effusions were penned as 
 protests against bigotry and presumption." H. T. Tucker- 
 man. 
 
 " The vigor of his satire, the severity of illustration with 
 
238 BURNS 
 
 which his fancy instantly supplied him, bore down all retort.'' 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " Burns possessed great force as a satirist, for a satirist of 
 the most pungent order unquestionably he was too much, in 
 fact, for his own peaceable march through life, . . . but 
 not too much for public correction and reproof when, as in 
 the case of < Holy Willie ' and < The Holy Fair,' the lash was 
 wisely and effectively wielded. ... In connection with 
 his power of seizing the striking features of character, must be 
 mentioned his tremendous force as a satirist." -John Stuart 
 Blackie. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Hear how he clears the points o' faith 
 
 Wi' rattlin' an' wi' thumpin' ! 
 Now meekly calm, now wild in wrath, 
 
 He's stampin' and he's jumpin' ! 
 His lengthened chin, his turned up snout, 
 
 His eldritch [unearthly] squeal an* gestures, 
 O how they fire the heart devout, 
 Like cantharidian plasters, 
 On sic a day ! 
 
 A vast, unbottomed, boundless pit, 
 
 FilPd fou [full] o' lowin [flaming] brunstane [brimstone], 
 Wha's raging flame an' scorching heat, 
 
 Wad melt the hardest whunstane [whinstone] ! 
 The half asleep start up wi' fear, 
 
 An' think they hear it roarin', 
 When presently it does appear 
 
 'Twas but some neebor snorin', 
 Asleep that day. 
 
 How monie hearts this day converts 
 
 O' sinners an* o' lasses ! 
 Their hearts o' stane, gin night, are gane 
 
 As saft as on'y flesh is. 
 There's some are fou o' love divine, 
 
 There's some are fou o' brandy," &c. The Holy Fair. 
 
BURNS 239 
 
 " When frae my mither's womb I fell, 
 Thou might hae plunged me into Hell, 
 To gnash my gums, to weep and wail, 
 
 In burnin* lake, 
 
 Where damned devils roar and yell, 
 Chain'd to a stake." 
 
 Holy Willie's Prayer. 
 
 " He fine a mangy sheep could scrub 
 
 Or nobly fling the gospel club, 
 
 And New-light herds could nicely drub, 
 
 Or pay their skin ; 
 Could shake them ower the burning dub [pit] 
 
 Or heave them in." The Twa Herds. 
 
 7. Picturesqueness Descriptive Power. "No 
 
 poet of any age or nation is more graphic than Burns : the 
 characteristic features disclose themselves to him at a glance. 
 Three lines from his hand, and we have a likeness. And in 
 that rough dialect, in that rude, often awkward metre, so clear 
 and definite a likeness ! It seems a draughtsman working 
 with a burnt stick ; and yet the burning of a Retzch is not 
 more expressive or exact. . . . It is reverence, it is love 
 towards all Nature that inspires him, that opens his eyes to its 
 beauty, and makes heart and voice eloquent in its praise." 
 Carlyle. 
 
 " For all aspects of the natural world he has the same clear 
 eye, the same open heart that he has for man. His love of 
 nature is intense, but very simple and direct ; no subtilizings 
 nor refinings about it, nor any of that nature-worship which 
 soon after his time came in. . . . Everywhere in his 
 poetry nature comes in, not so much as a being indepen- 
 dent of man but as the background of his pictures of life 
 and human character. ... In ' Halloween ' he has 
 sketched the Ayrshire peasantry as they appeared in their 
 hours of merriment painted with a few vivid strokes a dozen 
 distinct pictures of country lads and lasses, sires and dames, 
 
240 BURNS 
 
 and at the same time preserved forever the remembrance of 
 the antique customs and superstitious observances, which, 
 even in Burns's day, were beginning to fade, and have now 
 all but disappeared. . . . How true his perceptions of 
 her [Nature's] features are, how pure and transparent the 
 feelings she awakens in him! . . . Scottish Lowland 
 scenery is never so truly and vividly described as when Burns 
 uses his own vernacular. . . . Everywhere with him 
 man, his feelings and his fate, stand out in the front of his 
 pictures, and Nature comes in as the delightful background 
 yet Nature loved with a love, beheld with a rapture, all the 
 more genuine because his pulses throbbed in such intense 
 sympathy with man. Every reader can recall many a won- 
 derful line, sometimes a whole verse in his love-songs, in which 
 the surrounding landscape is flashed on the mind's eye." 
 ; /. C. Shairp. 
 
 " He has in all his compositions great force of conception 
 and great spirit and animation in its expression. He has 
 taken a large range through the region of Fancy, and natu- 
 ralized himself in almost all her climates. He has . 
 great powers of description. There is another fragment, also, 
 called ' Vision,' which belongs to a higher order of poetry. 
 If Burns had never written anything else, the power of 
 description and the vigor of the whole composition would 
 have entitled him to the remembrance of posterity." - 
 Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 11 Touched by his hand, the way -side weed 
 Becomes a flower ; the lowliest reed 
 
 Beside the stream 
 
 Is clothed with beauty ; gorse and grass 
 And heather, where his footsteps pass, 
 
 The brighter seem." Longfellow. 
 
 " The dialect of Burns was fitted to deal with any subject ; 
 and whether it was a stormy night, a shepherd's collie, a 
 sheep struggling in the snow, the conduct of cowardly 
 
BURNS 241 
 
 soldiers in the field, the gait and cogitations of a drunken 
 man, or only a village cock-crow in the morning, he could 
 find language to give it freshness, body, and relief." Robert 
 Louis Stevenson. 
 
 " He could describe with admirable fidelity and force inci- 
 dents, scenes, manners, characters, or whatever else, which had 
 fallen within his experience or observation." G. L. Craik. 
 
 " His page is a lively image of the contemporary life and 
 country from which he sprung." Thomas Campbell. 
 
 "But within the range, it [his description] is perfect; it 
 is never exaggerated, nothing is forced or over-dwelt on ; it is 
 the natural and swift reproduction of the landscape, and all 
 that is said sounds sweetly and smells sweetly to the sense." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Admiring Nature in her wildest grace 
 These northern scenes with weary feet I trace ; 
 O'er many a winding dale and painful steep, 
 Th' abodes of covered grouse and timid sheep, 
 My savage journey, curious, I pursue. 
 Till famed Breadalbane opens to my view 
 The meeting cliffs each deep-sunk glen divides, 
 The woods, wild-scattered, clothe their ample sides ; 
 Th' outstretching lake embosomed 'mong the hills, 
 The eye with wonder and amazement fills ; 
 The Tay meandering sweet in infant pride, 
 The palace rising on its verdant side ; 
 The lawns wood-fringed in Nature's native taste, 
 The hillocks dropt in Nature's careless haste ; 
 The arches striding o'er the new-born stream ; 
 The village glittering in the noontide beam ! " 
 
 Written with a Pencil, Etc. 
 
 " November chill blaws loud wi* angry sugh ; 
 
 The shortening winter day is near a close ; 
 The miry beasts retreating frae the plugh ; 
 The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose 
 16 
 
242 BURNS 
 
 The toil-worn cotter frae his labour goes, 
 This night his weekly moil is at an end, 
 
 Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes, 
 Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend ! " 
 
 The Cotter's Saturday Night. 
 
 " Upon a summer Sunday morn, 
 
 When Nature's face is fair, 
 I walked forth to view the corn, 
 
 And snuff the cooler air. 
 The risin' sun o'er Galston muirs 
 Wi' glorious light was glintin ; 
 The hares were hirplin down the furs, 
 The lav'rocks they were chantin." 
 
 Fu' Sweet That Day. 
 
 8. Kindly Humor Sportiveness. Unlike most writ- 
 ers, Burns has equal command of both extremes of satire 
 of the kind that stings (already noticed) and the kind that 
 excites only a good-natured smile. 
 
 "Under a lighter characteristic, the same principle of 
 love, which we have recognized as the great characteristic of 
 Burns, and of all true poets, occasionally manifests itself in the 
 shape of humor. Everywhere, indeed, in his sunny moods, a 
 full buoyant flood of mirth rolls through the mind of Burns ; 
 he rises to the high and stoops to the low, and is brother and 
 playmate to all caricature; for this is drollery rather than 
 humor ; but a much tenderer sportfulness dwells in him, and 
 comes forth, here and there, in evanescent and beautiful 
 touches. ... As in his 'Address to the Mouse,' or 
 the 'Farmer's Mare,' or in his 'Elegy on Poor Mailie,' 
 which last may be reckoned as his happiest effort of this 
 kind. In these pieces there are traits of a humor as fine as 
 that of Sterne ; yet altogether different, original, peculiar 
 the humor of Burns." Carlyle. 
 
 "He has genuine gaiety, a glow of jocularity ; laughter 
 commends itself to him ; he praises it as well as good suppers 
 
BURNS 243 
 
 of good comrades, where wine is plentiful, pleasantry abounds, 
 ideas pour forth, poetry sparkles, and causes a carnival of 
 beautiful figures and good-humored people to move about in 
 the human brain." Taine. 
 
 11 It was in the humorous, the comic, the satirical, that he 
 first tried and proved his strength. Exulting to find that a 
 rush of words was ready at his will that no sooner flashed 
 his fancies than on the instant they were embodied, he wan- 
 toned and revelled among the subjects that had always seemed 
 to him the most risible, whatever the kind of laughter, simple 
 or compound pure mirth or a mixture of mirth and con- 
 tempt, even of indignation and scorn mirth still being the 
 chief ingredient that qualifies the whole." Professor Wilson. 
 
 " Where is the wooing-match that for pointed humor and 
 drollery can compare with that of Duncan Gray, when * Meg 
 was deaf as Culsa Craig,' and Duncan ' spak o' lowpin o'er 
 him ' ? These are lines that for happy humor none but Burns 
 could have hit off." -J. C. Shairp. 
 
 " His humor comes from him in a stream so deep and easy 
 that I will venture to call him the best of humorous poets." 
 Robert Louis Stevenson. 
 
 " Such a collection of humorous lyrics, connected by vivid 
 poetical descriptions, is not perhaps to be paralleled in the 
 English language." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " One notable feature in his genius a feature which has 
 not seldom been wanting in the greatest of minds is humor, 
 a certain sportive fence of the soul delighting in the significant 
 conjunction of contraries, a quality peculiarly Scotch, and 
 which in Scotchmen seems a counterpoise graciously provided 
 by Nature to that overcharge of thought fulness and serious- 
 ness, which so strikingly contrasts them with their Hibernian 
 cousins across the channel." -John Stuart Blackie. 
 
244 BURNS 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " For Lords or Kings I dinna mourn, 
 E'en let them die for that they're born : 
 But oh ! prodigious to reflec' ! 
 
 A Towmont [Twelvemonth], Sirs, is gane to wreck I 
 O Eighty-eight, in thy sma' space 
 What dire events hae taken place ! 
 Of what enjoyments thou hast reft us ! 
 In what a pickle thou hast left us ! 
 The Spanish empire's tint [lost] a head, 
 And my auld teethless Bawtie's dead ! 
 The tulzie's [quarrel] sair 'tween Pitt an' Fox, 
 An' 'tween our Maggie's twa wee cocks." 
 
 Elegy on the Year 1788. 
 
 " As ye gae up by yon hillside, 
 Speer in for bonny Bessy, 
 She'll gae ye a beck, and bid ye licht, 
 And handsomely address ye. 
 There's few sae bonnie, nane sae guid, 
 In a* king George's dominion ; 
 If ye should doubt the truth of this 
 It's Bessy's ain opinion." The Tarbolton Lasses. 
 
 " I wadna been surprised to spy 
 You on an auld wife's flainen toy [flannel cap] : 
 Or aiblins some bit duddie boy, 
 
 On's wyliecoat [flannel waistcoat] ; 
 But Miss's fine Lunardi ! fie ! 
 
 How dare ye do 't ? " 
 
 To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet. 
 
 Q. Warmth of Affection." He is a man of the most 
 impassioned temper ; with passions not strong only but noble, 
 and of the sort in which great virtues and great poems take 
 their rise. . . . What warm, all-comprehending fellow- 
 feeling ; what trustful, boundless love ; what generous exag- 
 geration of the object loved ! His rustic friend, his nut- 
 
BURNS 245 
 
 brown maiden, are no longer mean and homely, but a hero 
 and a queen, whom he prizes as the paragons of the earth. 
 . . . Poetry is indeed his companion, but Love also, and 
 Courage ; the simple feelings, the worth, the nobleness, that 
 dwell under the straw roof, are dear and venerable to his 
 heart. . . . And so kind and warm a soul ; so full of in- 
 born riches, of love to all living and lifeless things." Carlyle. 
 " The earliest poem he composed was in his seventeenth 
 summer; a simple love-song in praise of a girl who was his 
 companion in the harvest field. The last strain he breathed was 
 from his death-bed in remembrance of some former affection. 
 . . . He had a compassionate sympathy for the old name- 
 less song-makers of his country, lying in their unknown graves, 
 all Scotland over. . . . And then his humanity was not 
 confined to man, it overflowed to his lower fellow-creatures. 
 His lines about the pet ewe, the worn-out mare, the field- 
 mouse, the wounded hare, have long been household words. 
 Observe the peculiar intensity of his nature, the fervid heart, 
 the trembling sensibility, the headlong passion, all thrilling 
 through an intellect strong and keen beyond that of other 
 men."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 " He was always in love. He made love the great end of 
 existence to such a degree, that at the club which he founded 
 every member was obliged to be the declared lover 
 of one or more fair ones." Tame. 
 
 " He sings of love, whose flame illumines 
 The darkness of lone cottage rooms : 
 
 He feels the force, 
 
 The treacherous undertone and stress, 
 Of wayward passions, and no less 
 
 The keen remorse." Longfellow. 
 
 "It is true that his love of Nature was always linked with 
 some vehement or some sweet affection for living creatures, and 
 that it was for the sake of the humanity that she cherishes in her 
 bosom that she was dear to him as his own life blood. 
 
246 BURNS 
 
 In nothing else is the sincerity of his soul more apparent than 
 in his friendships ; all who had ever been kind to him he 
 loved to the last. . . . Ay, for many a deep reason the 
 Scottish people love their own Robert Burns. Never was the 
 personal character of a poet so strongly and endearingly ex- 
 hibited in his song. They love him because he loved his 
 own order, nor ever desired for a single moment to quit it. 
 They love him because he loved the very humblest condition 
 of humanity, where everything good was only the more com- 
 mended to his manly mind by disadvantages of social posi- 
 tion." Professor Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The day returns, my bosom burns, 
 The blissful day we twa did meet, 
 Tho' winter wild in tempest toil'd, 
 Ne'er summer sun was half sae sweet. 
 Than a' the pride that loads the tide, 
 And crosses o'er the sultry line ; 
 Than kingly robes, than crowns and globes ; 
 Heaven gave me more, it made thee mine." 
 
 The Blissful Day. 
 
 " All hail, ye tender feelings dear ! 
 The smile of love, the friendly tear, 
 The sympathetic glow ! 
 Long since, this world's thorny ways 
 Had number'd out my weary days, 
 Had it not been for you ! 
 Fate still has blest me with a friend, 
 In every care and ill." Epistle to Da-vie. 
 
 " But round my heart the ties are bound, 
 That heart transpierc'd with many a wound: 
 These bleed afresh, those ties I tear, 
 To leave the bonny banks of Ayr. 
 
BURNS 247 
 
 Farewell, my friends ! Farewell, my foes ! 
 My peace with these, my love with those 
 The bursting tears my heart declare ; 
 Farewell, the bonny banks of Ayr." 
 
 The Author's Farewell to His Native Country. 
 
 ^. Conviviality Coarseness Sensuality. 
 
 Those critics who are disposed to ''cast the first stone" at 
 Burns find, alas ! abundant justification in his poems. Those 
 who, like Burns, are disposed to " gently scan your brother 
 man," will exclaim with Principal Shairp : " How mysterious 
 to reflect that the same qualities on their emotional side made 
 him the great songster of the world, and on their practical 
 side drove him to ruin!" All Burns's critics agree that 
 much of the coarseness in the poet's writing is due to the un- 
 fortunate influence of that coterie of "heavy country wits " 
 in the village of Mauchline who admitted Burns to their 
 choice circle and thus gave him his first "rise in the world." 
 Prior to the time of his entrance into this circle, there was 
 little in Burns's verses to call for reproach. The applause and 
 the stimulus of these cronies must be recognized as the cause 
 of much of what we most regret in the poet's life and work. 
 Illustrations of this quality of Burns are too plentiful to need 
 citing. His two masterpieces, "The Jolly Beggars" and 
 " Tarn o' Shanter," afford abundant specimens. 
 
 " The poems and even some of the songs of Burns are not 
 free from grossness, which he himself regretted to the last. 
 . . . In ' The Jolly Beggars, ' the materials are 
 
 so coarse and the sentiment so gross as to make it, for all its 
 dramatic power, offensive.";/. C. Shairp. 
 
 "The leading vice in Burns's character, and the cardi- 
 nal deformity, indeed, of all his productions, was his con- 
 tempt, or affectation of contempt, for prudence, decency, 
 and regularity. . . . This is the very slang of the 
 worst German plays and the lowest of our town-made 
 
248 BURNS 
 
 novels; nor can anything be more lamentable than that it 
 should have found a patron in such a man as Burns and com- 
 municated to many of his productions a character of immor- 
 ality, at once contemptible and hateful. . . . It is humili- 
 ating to think how deeply Burns has fallen into this debasing 
 error. He is perpetually making a parade of his thought- 
 lessness, inflammability, and impudence, and talking, with 
 much complacency and exultation, of the offence he has oc- 
 casioned to the sober and correct part of mankind." Francis 
 Jeffrey. 
 
 " He carried conviviality to an excess, violated his own 
 principles of virtue, and grafted license upon love. ' ' Henry 
 Ward Beecher. 
 
 " You [Burns] combined in certain of your letters a liber- 
 tine theory with your practice, you poured out in your song 
 and raptures your shame and your scorn." Andrew Lang. 
 
 11 Burns was as free of action as he was of words; broad 
 jests crop up freely in his verses. He calls himself an unre- 
 generate heathen, and he is right. ... It seems to me 
 that by his nature he was in love with all women. 
 It was the excess of sap which overflowed within him and 
 soiled the bark. Doubtless he did not boast of these ex- 
 cesses, he rather repented of them." Taine. 
 
 " Burns could hardly have described the excesses of mad, 
 hairbrained, roaring mirth and convivial indulgence, which 
 is the soul of it, if he himself had not ' drunk full oftener of 
 the tun than of the well.' " William Hazlitt. 
 
 "To the ill-starred Burns was given the power of making 
 man's life more venerable, but that of wisely guiding his own 
 life was not given. Destiny for so in our ignorance we 
 must speak his faults, the faults of others, proved too hard 
 for him ; and that spirit which might have soared, could it 
 but have walked, soon sank to the dust, its glorious faculties 
 trodden under foot in the blossom, and died, we may almost 
 say, without ever having lived." Carlyle. 
 
BURNS 249 
 
 " The magic of that countenance, making Burns at once 
 tempter and tempted, may explain many a sad story." 
 Charles Kmgsley. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " No churchman am I for to rail and to write, 
 No statesman nor soldier to plot or to fight, 
 No sly man of business contriving a snare, 
 For a big-bellie'd bottle 's the whole of my care. 
 
 The peer I don't envy, I give him his bow ; 
 I scorn not the peasant though ever so low ; 
 But a club of good fellows like those that are here, 
 And a bottle like this, are my glory and care." 
 
 The Big -Bellied Bottle. 
 
 " Let other poets raise a fracas 
 
 'Bout vines an' wines, an' drunken Bacchus 
 An' crabbit names and stories wrack us, 
 
 An' grate our lug [earj, 
 I sing the juice Scots bear can mak us, 
 
 In glass or jug." Scotch Drink. 
 
 " What is title ? what is treasure ? 
 
 What is reputation's care ? 
 If we lead a life of pleasure, 
 'Tis no matter how or where ! 
 
 With the ready trick and fable, 
 
 Round we wander all the day ; 
 And at night in barn or stable, 
 
 Hug our doxies in the hay. 
 
 Does the train-attended carriage 
 Through the country lighter rove ? 
 
 Does the sober bed of marriage 
 Witness brighter scenes of love ? " 
 
 The Jolly Beggars. 
 
 II. Sublimity." Burns is one of those men who reach 
 down to the perennial deeps, who take rank among the heroic 
 men. He was born in a poor Ayrshire hut. The largest 
 
250 BURNS 
 
 soul of all the British lands came among us in the shape of a 
 hard-handed Scotch peasant. . . . The * hoar visage ' 
 of winter delights him ; he dwells with a sad and often-re- 
 turning fondness on these scenes of solemn desolation ; but 
 the voice of the tempest becomes an anthem to his ears ; he 
 loves to walk in the sounding woods, for ' it raises his thoughts 
 to him that walketh on the wings of the wind.' ... In 
 his abasement, in his extreme need, he forgets not for a. mo- 
 ment the majesty of poetry and manhood. . . . But 
 some beams from it [Burns's genius] did, by fits, pierce 
 through; and it tinted those clouds with rainbow and orient 
 colors into a glory and stern grandeur, which men silently 
 gaze on with wonder and tears." Carlyle. 
 
 " It ['The Cotter's Saturday Night 'J is a noble and pathetic 
 picture of human manners mingled with a fine religious awe. 
 It comes over the mind like a slow and solemn strain of 
 music. Repeatedly, in Burns's poems, we find touches of 
 what the poet himself so finely calls ' the pathos and sub- 
 lime of human life.' " William Hazlitt. 
 
 " He rises occasionally into a strain of beautiful description 
 or lofty sentiment, far above the pitch of his original concep- 
 tion." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The sweeping blast, the sky o'ercast, 
 The joyless winter day, 
 Let others fear, to me more dear 
 Than all the pride of May: 
 The tempest's howl it soothes my soul, 
 My griefs it seems to join: 
 The leafless trees my fancy please, 
 Their fate resembles mine." Winter. 
 
 " O Thou, great Governor of all below ! 
 
 If I may dare a lifted eye to Thee, 
 Thy nod can make the tempest cease to blow, 
 And still the tumult of the raging sea: 
 
BURNS 251 
 
 With that controlling power assist even me 
 Those headlong furious passions to confine, 
 
 For all unfit I feel my power to be 
 To rule their torrent in the allowed line: 
 Oh, aid me with Thy help, omnipotence Divine." 
 Stanzas on the Prospect of Death. 
 
 11 Ye holy walls that, still sublime, 
 Resist the crumbling touch of time, 
 How strongly still your form displays 
 The piety of ancient days ! 
 As through your ruins, hoar and gray- 
 Ruins yet beauteous in decay 
 The silvery moonbeams trembling fly, 
 The forms of ages long gone by 
 Crowd thick on Fancy's wondering eye, 
 And wake the soul to musings high." 
 
 Verses on the Ruins of Lincluden Abbey, 
 
COWPER, 1731-1800 
 
 Biographical Outline. William Cowper, bom at 
 Great Berkhampstead, November 26, 1731 ; father a clergy- 
 man and at one time chaplain to George II. ; mother related 
 to the poet Donne and descended indirectly from Henry II. ; 
 loses his mother at the age of six, a loss from which he never 
 recovered ; he is exceedingly timid and sensitive even as a 
 child ; soon after his mother's death Cowper is placed in the 
 school of one Dr. Pitman, in Market Street, Hertfordshire, 
 where he is abused and bullied by the older and stronger 
 boys; he is removed from Dr. Pitman's school on account 
 of inflammation of the eyes, caused, it is said, by excessive 
 weeping, and is placed for two years in the home of an ocu- 
 list ; in 1741 he is placed in Westminster School, where he 
 takes part in athletic sports and is less miserable than at 
 Market Street ; he studies Latin at Westminster under Vin- 
 cent Bourne, to whom Cowper becomes attached ; he be- 
 comes a good Latin scholar, and reads the " Iliad " and the 
 " Odyssey " outside of school hours with a friend ; he has 
 Warren Hastings as a school-mate at Westminster ; he writes 
 his first poem, an imitation of Phillips's " Splendid Shil- 
 ling," and helps his brother John, at Cambridge, to trans- 
 late the " Henriade " in 1748, while still at Westminster ; he 
 leaves Westminster in 1748, spends nine months at his home 
 in Great Berkhampstead, and is articled, in 1749, to one 
 Chapman, a London attorney, with whom he remains three 
 years, completing his articles ; while in London Cowper fre- 
 quently visits the home of his uncle, Ashley Cowper, with 
 whose daughter Theodora he falls in love, and addresses to 
 
 252 
 
COWPER 253 
 
 her many of his early poems under the name of " Delia ;" 
 he takes chambers in the Middle Temple in 1752, and is called 
 to the bar in 1754, but never practices, having studied law 
 merely to please his father ; he gives his time to literature, and 
 becomes a member of the " Nonsense Club," a group of 
 seven Westminster men interested in literature and journalism, 
 among whom were Bonnell Thornton, Coleman, and Lloyd ; 
 he associates also with Churchill, Wilkes, and Hogarth; he 
 is refused the hand of his cousin by her father, though she 
 remains single and faithful to Cowper till her death ; he 
 loses his father in 1752, but is not much affected by the loss; 
 he receives a small patrimony from his father ; he secures a 
 position as Commissioner of Bankrupts, which brings him 
 ;6o per annum, and, in 1759, removes to the Inner 
 Temple ; through the influence of his cousin, Major Cowper, 
 Cowper is offered first the office of Reading Clerk and Clerk 
 of Committees in the House of Lords and then that of Clerk 
 of the Journals ; Cowper accepts both, successively, and fails 
 to appear in each case because of diffidence as to reading in 
 public and fear of inability to pass the examination required 
 for the second position ; he becomes exceedingly nervous 
 and a victim to hypochondria ; he convinces himself that 
 suicide is lawful, and makes preparations to take his life sev- 
 eral times, but shrinks at the last moment ; he finally tries to 
 hang himself, and is apparently prevented only by the break- 
 ing of the garter that he has used for a noose ; he is seized 
 with religious horrors, and becomes so completely insane that 
 he is placed, in 1763, in the private asylum of one Dr. 
 Cotton, at St. Albans ; after remaining eighteen months in 
 the asylum, Cowper is discharged, having been restored, as he 
 believed, through divine faith ; he celebrates his deliverance 
 in the poem "The Happy Change; " he is assisted finan- 
 cially by friends, and goes, in 1765, to reside in Hunting- 
 don, where he meets Mrs. Unwin, the " Mary " of his 
 poems ; he maintains a servant and an outcast boy, both 
 
254 COWPER 
 
 brought with him from St. Albans ; he takes up his residence 
 with the Unwins, who care for him tenderly; after Mr. Un- 
 win's death, in 1767, he goes with Mrs. Unwin to reside at 
 Olney, where Cowper comes under the influence of the Rev. 
 John Newton ; the religious life of Cowper and t Unwins 
 is so strict and regular that they are called " Metric lists ; " 
 Cowper and Mrs. Unwin become near neighbors to Nc "ton, 
 and enter on " a decided course of religious happiness; " at 
 Newton's suggestion Cowper begins the " Olney Hymns; " 
 under the ascetic life recommended by Newton, aggravated 
 by the death of his brother, Cowper becomes again insane in 
 1773, fancies himself rejected of Heaven, etc., and is slowly 
 nursed back to reason by Mrs. Unwin ; he begins to domesti- 
 cate hares, and, at Mrs. Unwin's suggestion, in 1780, begins 
 to write poetry, as furnishing congenial occupation for his 
 mind; Mrs. Unwin suggests the theme "The Progress of 
 Error," and within the year Cowper writes the poem of that 
 title together with " Truth," " Table-Talk," and " Expos- 
 tulation ; " in 1781 he meets Lady Austen, who suggests to 
 him the composition of " The Task," which Cowper begins in 
 1783 and publishes in 1785 ; " The Task " is successful and 
 wins public recognition; after completing "The Task" 
 he writes " The Loss of the Royal George," " The Solitude of 
 Alexander Selkirk," "The Poplar Field," "The Shrub- 
 bery," "The Needless Alarm," etc.; in 1784, at Lady 
 Austen's suggestion, Cowper begins his translation of Homer, 
 which he publishes in 1791 ; he hears the story of "John 
 Gilpin " from Lady Austen while winding her thread, and 
 writes the ballad at a single sitting ; he becomes estranged 
 from Lady Austen in 1785 through her dislike of a certain 
 " lecture " in one of Cowper's letters ; he becomes again 
 insane in 1791 and again attempts suicide; Lady Austen's 
 place is supplied by Cowper's cousin, Lady Hesketh ; Cow- 
 per's health becomes shattered by recourse to medical em- 
 piricism ; he removes, in 1786, with Mrs. Unwin, to Wes- 
 
COWPER 255 
 
 ton ; Mrs. Unwin's faculties become affected, and both are 
 received into the home of the poet Hay ley at Eartham ; they 
 soon return to Weston, where Cowper becomes again insane 
 and again attempts suicide ; Hayley and other friends remove 
 them to Mundsley, in Norfolk, thence to Dunham Lodge, 
 near S waff ham, and finally to East Dereham, where Mrs. Un- 
 win dies in 1799 ; soon afterward Cowper recovers his facul- 
 ties sufficiently to write " The Castaway," then sinks into a 
 state of utter dejection, and dies at East Dereham, April 27, 
 1800. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON COWPER. 
 
 Sainte-Beuve, C. A., " English Portraits." New York, 1875, Holt, 
 
 164-238. 
 Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 3: 
 
 208-241. 
 Cheever, G. B., " Lectures on the Life, etc., of Cowper." New York, 
 
 1856, R. Carter, v. index. 
 
 Birrell, A., " Res Judicata:." New York, 1892, Scribner, 81-114. 
 Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 
 
 H3-I3I. 
 Gosse, E., "A History of Eighteenth Century Literature." London, 
 
 1889, Macmillan, 325. 
 Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, 
 
 Whittaker, 125-169. 
 Rossetti, W., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 177- 
 
 188. 
 Sainte-Beuve, C. A., " Causeries de Lundi." Paris, 1850, Graniere 
 
 Freres, 11 : 139-197. 
 Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature." Boston, 1891, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin & Co., 219-227. 
 Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 
 
 I : 478-480 and 3: 155. 
 Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 
 
 1847, Harper, 442-468. 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, "English Men of Letters." New York, 1880, Har- 
 per, v. index. 
 
2$6 COWPER 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 
 
 Macmillan, I : 13-82. 
 
 Collier, W. F., " History of English Literature." London, 1892, Nel- 
 son, 379-385 . 
 McMahon, A. B., " Best Letters of Cowper." Chicago, 1893, McClurg, 
 
 v. index. 
 
 Wright, T., " Life of Cowper." London, 1892, Unwin, v. index. 
 Cowper, W., Poems, with Life, by Chalmers," London, 1870. 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 
 
 I : 321-328. 
 Taine, H. A., "A History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 3: 62-67. 
 
 Ward, T. H., " English Poets." New York, 1881, Macmillan, 3 : 62-67. 
 Cowper, W. , "Private Correspondence." London, 1824, H. Colburn, 2 
 
 vols., 217-225. 
 Dawson, G., "Biographical Lectures." London, Kegan Paul, French 
 
 & Co., 1880, 217-224 
 Browning, Mrs. E. B., "Poetical Works." New York, 1862, Miller, 
 
 73-74- 
 
 Southey, R., " Life of Cowper. " London, 1853, Bohu, v. index. 
 
 Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875. 
 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1851. 
 
 Haley, W., "The Life and Posthumous Writings of Cowper." Lon- 
 don, 1886, J. Seagrave, 2 vols., v. index. 
 
 Canadian Monthly, 4: 213-220 (Goldwin Smith). 
 
 Chautauquan, 15 : 402-407 (J. V. Cheney). 
 
 Nation, 39: 57-58 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 
 North American Review, 44 : 29-55 (E. T. Channing^). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 /I. Minute Descriptive Power. "It is these indoor 
 scenes, this common world, this ' gentle round of calm de- 
 lights,' the petty detail of quiet relaxation, that Cowper ex- 
 cels in. The post-boy, the winter's evening, the newspaper, 
 the knitting needles, the stockings, these are his subjects. 
 These sketches have the highest merit, suitableness of style." 
 Walter JSagehot. 
 
COWPER 257 
 
 " The pleasures of the country and of home, the walk, the 
 garden, but above all the ' intimate delights ' of the winter 
 evening, the snug parlor, with its close-drawn curtains shut- 
 ting out the stormy night, the steaming and bubbling tea- 
 urn, the cheerful circle, the book read aloud, the newspaper, 
 through which we look out into the unquiet world, are 
 painted by the writer with a heartfelt enjoyment which in- 
 fects the reader." Goldwin Smith. 
 
 " The very foundation of his poetry is his close observation 
 of men and things; the close observation that fills his letters 
 with happily touched incidents of village life, with characters 
 sketched in a sentence, furnishes the groundwork of ' The 
 Task ' and the Satires. The snow-covered fields, the wagon 
 toiling through the drifts, the distant plough slow-moving, 
 the garden, the fireside, the gypsies, the village thief, the 
 clerical coxcomb, of all these he gives not only finished pict- 
 ures but pictures finished in the presence of the object and 
 not in the studio." T. H. Ward. 
 
 " Cowper possessed in a high degree the art of noting par- 
 ticular traits and curious details of things ; he was almost 
 minutely exact. . . . In his ' Winter Walk at Noon ' he 
 produced an exquisitely painted picture and one that was 
 finished, living, and natural." Sainte-Beuve . 
 
 " Impressions small to us were great to him ; and in a 
 room, a garden, he found the world. ... He discovers 
 a beauty and harmony in the coals of a sparkling fire, in the 
 movement of fingers over a piece of wool-work. . . . 
 Nature is to him like a gallery of splendid and various 
 pictures, which to us ordinary folk are always covered up 
 with cloths. Such is the new truth which Cowper's poems 
 brought to light. . . . We may find poetry, if we wish, 
 at our fireside and among the beds of our kitchen garden." 
 Taint. 
 
258 COWPER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Now roves the eye, 
 And, posted on this speculative height, 
 Exults in its command. The sheepfold here 
 Pours out its fleecy tenants o'er the glebe. 
 At first, progressive as a stream, they seek 
 The middle field ; but, scatter'd by degrees, 
 Each to his choice, soon whiten all the land. 
 There from the sun-burnt hayfield homeward creeps 
 The loaded wain ; while, lighten'd of its charge, 
 The wain that meets it passes swiftly by, 
 The boorish driver leaning o'er his team, 
 Vociferous, impatient of delay. 
 Nor less attractive is the woodland scene, 
 Diversified with trees of every growth, 
 Alike yet various. Here the gray, smooth trunks 
 Of ash or lime or beech distinctly shine 
 Within the twilight of their distant shades ; 
 There, lost behind a rising ground, the wood 
 Seems sunk and shorten'd to its topmost boughs." 
 
 The Task. 
 
 " Now stir the fire, and close the shutters fast, 
 Let fall the curtains, wheel the sofa round, 
 And, while the bubbling and loud-hissing urn 
 Throws up a steamy column, and the cups 
 That cheer but not inebriate wait on each, 
 So let us welcome peaceful evening in. 
 
 But here the needle plies its busy task, 
 
 The pattern grows, the well-depicted flower, 
 
 Wrought patiently into the snowy lawn, 
 
 Unfolds its bosom ; buds and leaves and sprigs 
 
 And curling tendrils, gracefully disposed, 
 
 Follow the nimble fingers of the fair ; 
 
 A wreath that cannot fade, of flowers that blow 
 
 With most success when all besides decay." The Task. 
 
COWPER 259 
 
 " The verdure of the plain lies buried deep 
 Beneath the dazzling deluge ; and the bents 
 And coarser grass, upspearing o'er the rest, 
 Of late unsightly and unseen, now shine 
 Conspicuous and in bright apparel clad, 
 And, fledged with icy feathers, nod superb. 
 The cattle mourn in corners, where the fence 
 Screens them, and seem half petrified to sleep 
 In unrecumbent sadness. There they wait 
 Their wonted fodder ; not like hungering man 
 Fretful if unsupplied ; but silent, meek, 
 And patient of the slow-paced swain's delay. 
 He from the stack carves out the accustom'd load, 
 Deep plunging and again deep plunging oft 
 His broad keen knife into the solid mass." The Task. 
 
 2. Shyness Fondness for Seclusion. Jeffrey 
 speaks of "that extraordinary combination of shyness and 
 ambition to which we are probably indebted for the very ex- 
 istence of Cowper's poetry." " Poor wounded bird," ex- 
 claims Sainte-Beuve, " he sought to crouch unseen in his 
 corner, to recover his strength little by little, to cure him- 
 self of his wound in secrecy and assuage his long and poig- 
 nant terrors. ... In the ever-recurring motive and theme 
 of the blessedness of home he is inexhaustible. Macaulay 
 calls Cowper " the gentle, shy, melancholy Calvinist, whose 
 spirit had been broken by fagging at school," and Dawson 
 speaks of " the holy shades and quiet ways and pleasant places 
 where Cowper, witty, wise, godly, and true, delighted to 
 walk." 
 
 " But little society disturbed that sequestered life ; few were 
 the men and fewer the women whom he met ; he companied 
 with sheep and birds, with his hares and his spaniel, till he 
 grew to know them as friends." Stop ford Brooke. 
 
 " No stricken deer that ever left the herd of men required 
 a solace more. . . . He speaks from the contemplative 
 air of rural retirement. He went thither to muse on the per- 
 
260 COWPER 
 
 ishing pleasures of life. His disposition was of that retiring 
 kind that shrinks from the world, and is free and at ease only 
 in seclusion. To exhibit himself, he tells us, was mortal 
 poison.' ... He desired no nearer view of the world 
 than he could gain from the newspaper ; or through the loop- 
 holes of retreat to see the stir of the great Babel and not feel 
 the crowd. . . . Such beings find their chief happiness 
 in the privacy of a home. . . . They turn aside from the 
 idols of fashion to worship their household gods. The fire- 
 side, the accustomed window, the familiar garden, bound their 
 desires." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Cowper's work, in the main, has only the sluggish vital- 
 ity of this life. ... A vision of quiet green fields, in- 
 habited by respectable gentlefolk, who led an existence of 
 humble routine, made up Cowper's world." G. E. Wood- 
 berry. 
 
 " He seldom launches out into general descriptions of 
 nature; he looks at her over his clipped hedges and from his 
 well-swept garden walks ; or if he makes a bolder experiment 
 now and then, it is with an air of precaution. ... He 
 is delicate to fastidiousness, and is glad to get back, after a 
 romantic adventure with crazy Kate, a party of gypsies, or a 
 little child on a common, to the drawing-room and the ladies 
 again, to the sofa and the tea-kettle." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Cowper said, substantially, ' Leave the world,' as Rous- 
 seau said, ' Upset the world.' Limited within a narrow circle 
 of ideas, and living in a society where the great issues of the 
 times were not represented in so naked a form, Cowper's in- 
 fluence ran in a more confined channel." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " Although he was neither husband nor father, Cowper was 
 the poet of the family ; he was the poet of the home, of a well- 
 ordered, pure, gently animated interior, of the grove we see 
 at the bottom of the garden, of the chimney corner." Sainte- 
 Beuve. 
 
COWPER 
 
 26l 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Oh blest seclusion from a jarring world 
 Which he, thus occupied, enjoys ! Retreat 
 Cannot indeed to guilty man restore 
 Lost innocence, or cancel follies past ; 
 But it has peace, and much secures the mind 
 From all assaults of evil, proving still 
 A faithful barrier, not o'erleaped with ease 
 By vicious custom, raging uncontrolled 
 Abroad and desolating public life. 
 Had I the choice of sublunary good, 
 What could I wish that I possess not here ? 
 Health, leisure, means to improve it, friendship, peace." 
 
 The Task. 
 
 " Thus Conscience pleads her cause within the breast, 
 Though long rebell'd against, not yet suppress'd, 
 And calls a creature form'd for God alone, 
 For Heaven's high purposes and not his own, 
 Calls him away from selfish ends and aims, 
 From what debilitates and what inflames, 
 From cities humming with a restless crowd, 
 Sordid as active, ignorant as loud, 
 Whose highest praise is that they live in vain, 
 The dupes of pleasure or the slaves of gain ; 
 Where works of man are clustered close around, 
 And works of God are hardly to be found, 
 To regions where, in spite of sin and woe, 
 Traces of Eden are still seen below, 
 Where mountain, river, forest, field, and grove, 
 Remind him of his Maker's power and love." 
 
 Retirement. 
 
 " Votaries of business and of pleasure prove 
 Faithless alike in friendship and in love. 
 Retired from all the circles of the gay 
 And all the crowds that bustle life away, 
 To scenes where competition, envy, strife, 
 Beget no thunder-clouds to trouble life 
 
262 COWPER 
 
 Let me, the charge of some good angel, find 
 One who has known and has escaped mankind ; 
 Polite yet virtuous, who has brought away 
 The manners, not the morals, of the day : 
 With him, perhaps with her (for men have known 
 No firmer friendships than the fair have shown), 
 Let me enjoy, in some unthought-of spot, 
 All former friends forgiven and forgot, 
 Down to the close of life's fast fading scene, 
 Union of hearts without a flaw between." 
 
 Valediction. 
 
 V Gloominess. " The only passion that ever moved him 
 the morbid passion of despair, when the cloud that ob- 
 scured his brain pressed heavy upon him ; and it was only 
 when he wrote under this influence that he produced master- 
 pieces, such as that noble and terrible poem, ' The Castaway ' 
 and the lines of self-description in ' The Task.' " T. H. 
 Ward. 
 
 "Unfortunately, the only record of his boyhood is the 
 sombre account of it given by himself in after years, when the 
 disposition to increase all the darker shades in his unregener- 
 ate days was strong upon him." Mrs. Oliphant. 
 
 "The impression always remained by him, or rather the 
 belief, that he had forfeited God's mercy and shut himself out 
 from hope and heaven by not executing the will of Jehovah 
 when it was made known to him and the appointed opportunity 
 had come. By letting that opportunity pass he thought he had 
 brought upon himself perpetual exclusion from God's favor. 
 For a long time he thought that even to implore mercy 
 would be opposing the determinate counsel of God. . . . 
 He thought himself shut out, by a particular edict, from 
 God's mercy, excluded from Heaven, and doomed to de- 
 struction. He thought that for him there was no access to 
 the mercy-seat, and that he had no right to pray." G. B. 
 Cheever. 
 
COWPER 263 
 
 " His whole life was a long sadness. . . . Despair 
 grew upon him apace, and he came to the settled opinion, 
 which never left him, that he was a doomed, damned m#n, 
 one who had committed an irreparable sin, and for whom 
 there was no redemption forevermore. . . . The last 
 five years of his life were passed in perpetual gloom. During 
 these five years he is said never to have smiled. . . . 
 His life was a perpetual want." George Dawson. 
 
 " Cowper was profoundly Christian; from the point of 
 view of proportion and taste, he was too much governed by 
 austerity. He had a side almost Hebraic in its severity and 
 terror . . . and at the same time he sometimes had sud- 
 denly a sight, a vision, of Sinai." Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Obscurest night involved the sky, 
 
 The Atlantic billows roared, 
 When such a destined wretch as I, 
 
 Wash'd headlong from on board, 
 Of friends, of hope, of all bereft, 
 His floating home forever left. 
 
 I therefore purpose not or dream, 
 
 Descanting on his fate, 
 To give the melancholy theme 
 
 A more enduring date : 
 But misery still delights to trace 
 Its semblance in another's case. 
 
 No voice divine the storm allay'd, 
 
 No light propitious shone ; 
 When, snatch'd from all effectual aid, 
 
 We perish'd, each alone : 
 But I beneath a rougher sea, 
 And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.*' 
 
 The Castaway, 
 
264 COWPER 
 
 " The Lord will happiness divine 
 
 On contrite hearts bestow ; 
 Then tell me, gracious God, is mine 
 A contrite heart or no ? 
 
 I sometimes think myself inclined 
 
 To love thee, if I could ; 
 But often feel another mind, 
 
 Averse to all that's good. 
 
 My best desires are faint and few 
 
 I fain would strive for more : 
 But when I cry, ' My strength renew ! ' 
 
 Seem weaker than before. 
 
 Thy saints are comforted, I know, 
 
 And love thy house of prayer ; 
 I therefore go where others go, 
 
 But find no comfort there." 
 
 The Contrite Heart. 
 
 " Oh, happy shades ! to me unblest, 
 
 Friendly to peace but not to me ; 
 How ill the scene that offers rest 
 And heart that cannot rest, agree ! 
 
 This glassy stream, that spreading pine, 
 Those alders quivering to the breeze, 
 
 Might soothe a soul less hurt than mine 
 And please, if anything could please. 
 
 But fix'd unalterable Care 
 
 Forgoes not what she feels within, 
 Shows the same sadness everywhere, 
 
 And slights the season and the scene." 
 
 The Shrubbery. 
 
 4. Love of Nature. Cowper was the harbinger of new 
 and better things in English poetry. It has been truly said 
 that "he, first of English poets, brought men back from the 
 town to the country." 
 
COWPER 265 
 
 " We read Cowper, not for his passion or for his ideas, but 
 for his love of nature and his faithful rendering of her beauty. 
 [Cowper teaches us that] God made the country, and 
 man made the town. True beauty is to be found only in un- 
 adulterate nature ; true pleasure only in the fields and woods 
 and in the simple offices of rural and domestic life. To watch 
 nature at her work ; to meditate ; to cultivate sympathy with 
 those creatures most fresh from nature's hand with animals 
 and the poor and friends of your home this [in Cowper's 
 judgment] is the only way to rational happiness." T. H. 
 Ward. 
 
 " God wrought within his shattered brain such quick poetic 
 
 senses 
 
 As hills have language for, and stars harmonious influences. 
 The pulse of dew upon the grass kept his within its number ; 
 And silent shadows from the trees refreshed him like a 
 
 slumber." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " Springtime almost intoxicates him. . . . There is 
 something of the squirrel in the gaiety with which it inspires 
 him. . . . Cowper loved the country dearly ; he loved 
 it to live in, to dwell in, and did not grow weary of it at any 
 age or at any season." Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 " His love of nature is at once of a narrower and sincerer 
 kind than that which Rousseau made fashionable. He has no 
 tendency to the misanthropic or cynical view which induces 
 men of morbid or affected minds to profess a love of savage 
 scenery simply because it is savage. Neither does he rise to 
 the more philosophical view, which sees in the seas and the 
 mountains the most striking symbols of the great forces of the 
 universe. Nature is to him a collection of baubles soon to be 
 taken away, and he seeks in its contemplation temporary relief 
 from anguish." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 "It was with an eye and heart thus blissfully enlightened 
 that Cowper had been taught to look upon nature ; and inas- 
 
266 COWPER 
 
 much as he has told us that, both in his delineations of nature 
 and of the human heart, he had drawn all from experience, 
 . . . the poet that could write, out of his own experience, 
 < The Winter Morning Walk' and 'The Winter Walk at 
 Noon,' must himself have been the happy man, appropriating 
 nature as his Father's work must himself have felt the dear 
 filial relationship, the assurance of a Father's love and of a 
 child's inheritance in heaven." G. B. Chcever. 
 
 11 His sense of beauty was practically confined to landscape 
 and small animals. . . . His poems on birds and flowers 
 are pretty conceits, but at the present day remind us a little 
 of the nursery." G. E. Woodbury. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thou knowest my praise of nature most sincere, 
 And that my raptures are not conjured up 
 To serve occasions of poetic pomp, 
 But genuine. . . . 
 
 " The achievements of art may amuse, 
 
 May even our wonder excite ; 
 But groves, hills, and valleys diffuse 
 A lasting, a sacred delight." 
 
 " O Nature, whose Elysian scenes disclose 
 His bright perfections at whose will they rose, 
 Next to the power that formed thee and sustains 
 Be thou the great inspirer of my strains." 
 
 " Lovely, indeed, the mimic works of art, 
 But nature's works far lovelier. I admire, 
 None more admires, the painter's magic skill, 
 Who shows me that which I shall never see : 
 
 But imitative strokes can do no more 
 
 Than please the eye sweet Nature every sense ; 
 
 The air salubrious of her lofty hills, 
 
 The cheering fragrance of her dewy vales 
 
COWPER 267 
 
 And music of her woods no works of man 
 
 May rival these ; these all bespeak a power 
 
 Peculiar and exclusively her own. 
 
 Beneath the open sky she spreads the feast ; 
 
 'Tis free to all 'tis every day renewed ; 
 
 Who scorns it, starves deservedly at home." The Task. 
 
 " Oh Winter ! ruler of the inverted year, 
 Thy scatter'd hair with sleet like ashes fill'd, 
 Thy breath congeal'd upon thy lips, thy cheeks 
 Fringed with beard made white with other snows 
 Than those of age, thy forehead wrapp'd in clouds, 
 A leafless branch thy sceptre, and thy throne 
 A sliding car indebted to no wheels, 
 But urged by storms along its slippery way; 
 I love thee, all unlovely as thou seem'st 
 And dreaded as thou art ! " The Task. 
 
 " The night was winter in its roughest mood ; 
 The morning sharp and clear. But now at noon 
 Upon the southern side of the slant hills, 
 And where the woods fence off the northern blasts, 
 The season smiles, resigning all its rage, 
 And has the warmth of May. The vault is blue 
 Without a cloud, and white without a speck 
 The dazzling splendor of the scene below. 
 Again the harmony comes o'er the vale ; 
 And through the trees I view the embattled tower 
 Whence all the music. I again perceive 
 The soothing influence of the wafted strains, 
 And settle in soft musings as I tread 
 The walk, still verdant, under oaks and elms, 
 Whose outspread branches overarch the glade." 
 
 The Task. 
 
 5. Theoretical Satire. Critical opinion concerning 
 "Cowper's satire is as diverse as it is concerning Thackeray's. 
 It is theoretical in that it is directed against sins real and 
 imaginary, of which Cowper had no personal experience or 
 observation, and because he was disposed to except from his 
 
268 COWPER 
 
 broad censure almost every specific case that happened to 
 come within his notice. 
 
 " Society was to him an abstraction, on which he dis- 
 coursed like a pulpiteer. His satiric whip not only has no 
 lash, it is brandished in the air. No man was ever less quali- 
 fied for the office of a censor ; his judgment is at once dis- 
 armed, and a breach in his principles is at once made by the 
 slightest personal influence. Bishops are bad : but the bishop 
 whose brother Cowper knows is a blessing to the church. Bit- 
 ter lines against Popery [the original lines 390 to 413 of 
 the poem entitled ' Consolation '] were struck out because the 
 writer had made the acquaintance of Mr. and Mrs. Throck- 
 morton, who were Roman Catholics. In all his social judg- 
 ments, Cowper is at a wrong point of view. He is always 
 deluded by the idol of his care. He writes perpetually on 
 the assumption that a life of retirement is more favorable to 
 virtue than a life of action." Goldwin Smith. 
 
 " Cowper knew but little of the world, and he became its 
 censor because he was so ignorant. He prided himself upon 
 being of it but not in it and looking upon it through his re- 
 treat. It is not strange, then, that much of his satire lacks 
 point." T. H. Ward. 
 
 " As a scold we think Cowper failed. He had a great idea 
 of the use of railing, and there are many pages of laudable 
 invective against various vices, which we feel no call whatever 
 to defend. But a great vituperator had need to be a great 
 hater ; and of any real rage, any such gall and bitterness as 
 great and irritable satirists have in other ages let loose upon 
 men, he was as incapable as a tame hare."- Walter Bagehot. 
 
 "The most effective satirist is the man who has escaped 
 with labor and pain, and not without some grievous stains, 
 from the slough in which others are mired. . . . Sepa- 
 rated by a retirement of twenty years from a world with 
 which he had never been very familiar, and at which he only 
 peeped through the loop-holes of retreat, his satire wanted 
 
COWPER 269 
 
 the brilliancy, the quickness of illustration from actual life, 
 which alone makes satire readable." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 So much for the opinions of three eminent critics ; that 
 some commentators have seen Cowper's whip brandished else- 
 where than "in air," is evident from the following esti- 
 mates : 
 
 " His satire is excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with 
 the polished manners of the gentleman and the indignation of 
 the virtuous man." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Few writers are more unsparing of the lash than the 
 shrinkingly sensitive Cowper. It may be that he does not 
 lay it on with the sense of personal power and indignant pay- 
 ing off of old scores which one finds in a Juvenal or a Pope ; 
 but the conviction that he is the mouthpiece of Providence, 
 and that, when William Cowper has pronounced a man rep- 
 robate, the smoke of his burning is sure to ascend up forever 
 and ever, stands instead of much, and lends unction to the 
 hallowed strain. . . . His narrow, exclusive, severe, and 
 arbitrary religious creed a creed which made him as sure 
 that other people were wicked and marked out for damnation 
 as that himself was elected and saved this creed speaks out 
 in his poems in unmistakable tones of harsh judgment and 
 unqualified denunciation." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 "The recluse in an out-of-the-way village set himself the 
 task of becoming a Christian Juvenal." -/". R. Greene. 
 
 " In his satire Cowper touches, not with savage bitterness, 
 but with a gentleness which healed while it lashed : He saw 
 cities and their evils through the exaggeration of distance and 
 in that glare of morality in which sin is so magnified that 
 the good which balances it is lost. He saw the curse which 
 rested on man and nothing else when he looked upon the 
 city. Cowper had the penetrating irony belonging to timid 
 and sorrowful natures, endowed with very delicate organs, 
 which are doubtless shocked by the bluntness and coarseness 
 around. ' ' Stopford Brooke. 
 
2/O COWPER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Would you your son should be a sot or dunce, 
 Lascivious, headstrong, or all these at once ; 
 That in good time the stripling's finished taste 
 For loose expense and fashionable waste 
 Should prove your ruin and his own at last ; 
 Train him in public with a mob of boys, 
 Childish in mischief only and in noise, 
 Else of a mannish growth, and, five in ten, 
 In infidelity and lewdness, men. 
 There shall he learn, ere sixteen winters old, 
 That authors are most useful pawn'd or sold ; 
 That pedantry is all that schools impart, 
 But taverns teach the knowledge of the heart ; 
 There waiter Dick, with bacchanalian lays, 
 Shall win his heart, and have his drunken praise, 
 His counsellor and bosom-friend shall prove, 
 And some street-pacing harlot his first love." 
 
 Tirocinium. 
 
 " But loose in morals and in manners vain, 
 In conversation frivolous, in dress 
 Extreme, at once rapacious and profuse ; 
 Frequent in park, with lady at his side, 
 Ambling and prattling scandal as he goes ; 
 But rare at home, and never at his books 
 Or with his pen, save when he scrawls a card ; 
 Constant at routs, familiar with a round 
 Of ladyships, a stranger to the poor ; 
 Ambitious of preferment for its gold, 
 And well prepared by ignorance and sloth, 
 By infidelity and love of the world, 
 To make God's work a sinecure ; a slave 
 To his own pleasures and his patron's pride 
 From such apostles, O ye mitred heads, 
 Preserve the Church ! and lay not careless hands 
 On skulls that cannot teach and will not learn." 
 
 The Task. 
 
COWPER 271 
 
 " How shall I speak thee or thy power address, 
 Thou god of our idolatry, the Press? 
 By thee religion, liberty, and laws 
 Exert their influence and advance their cause ; 
 By thee worse plagues than Pharaoh's land befell, 
 Diffused, make earth the vestibule of hell ; 
 Thou fountain, at which drink the good and wise ; 
 Thou ever-bubbling spring of endless lies ; 
 Like Eden's dead probationary tree, 
 Knowledge of good and evil is from thee ! " 
 
 The Progress of Error. 
 
 6. Patriotism. " Cowper is a patriot and a true English- 
 man, even inclusive of prejudice and bias. In order to read 
 him as he ought to be read and to understand thoroughly all 
 his chief points, . . . it is necessary to recollect the 
 events of those years the American War, the stormy debates 
 in Parliament, etc., etc." Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 "He derived his patriotism, and drew the, passion with 
 which he informed it, from the connection of his country 
 with God. It was God who was king of England and was 
 educating the nation ; and this conception bound all citizens 
 in the mutual love of one another and the whole. 
 It is not a note of mere lyric interest in Britain's glory on 
 the seas, like Thomson's ' Rule Britannia ; ' . . . it 
 is a note that thrills with emotion for England as God's 
 nation and having a work to do for man. We already 
 breathe the air of the patriotic poetry of Wordsworth." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " His love of country was absolute. He says : 
 ' I never framed a wish or formed a plan 
 That flattered me with hope of earthly bliss, 
 But there I laid the scene.' " H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Now and then, in reading ' The Task,' we come across a 
 dash of warlike patriotism which, amidst the general philan- 
 
2/2 COWPER 
 
 thropy, surprises and offends the reader's palate like garlic in 
 our butter." Goldwin Smith. 
 
 " Cowper, by virtue of his family traditions, was in theory 
 a sound Whig. ... He rises into a warmth on behalf 
 of liberty for which he thinks it right to make a simple- 
 minded apology in a note." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " England, with all thy faults, I love thee still 
 My country ! and while yet a nook is left 
 Where English minds and manners may be found, 
 Shall be constrain 'd to love thee. Though thy clime 
 Be fickle and thy year most part deform'd 
 With dripping rains, or wither'd by a frost 
 I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies 
 And fields without a flower for warmer France 
 With all her vines ; nor for Ausonia's groves 
 Of golden fruitage and her myrtle bowers. 
 To shake thy senate and from heights sublime 
 Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire 
 Upon thy foes, was never meant my task : 
 But I can feel thy fortunes and partake 
 Thy joys and sorrows with as true a heart." The Task. 
 
 " Peculiar is the grace by thee possess'd, 
 Thy foes implacable, thy land at rest ; 
 Thy thunders travel over earth and seas, 
 And all at home is pleasure, wealth, and ease. 
 'Tis thus, extending his tempestuous arm, 
 Thy Maker fills the nations with alarm ; 
 While his own heaven surveys the troubled scene, 
 And feels no change, unshaken and serene. 
 Freedom, in other lands scarce known to shine, 
 Pours out a flood of splendor upon thine ; 
 Thou hast as bright an interest in her rays 
 As ever Roman had in Rome's best days." 
 
 Expostulation. 
 
COWPER 2/3 
 
 " ' Slaves cannot breathe in England ; if their lungs 
 Receive our air, that moment they are free ; 
 They touch our country and their shackles fall.' 
 That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
 And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then, 
 And let it circulate through every vein 
 Of all your empire ; that where Britain's power 
 Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too." The Task. 
 
 7. Sportiveness Fantastic Humor. Cowper's 
 humor is sui generis, for the reason that, excepting perhaps 
 the humor of Lamb, Cowper's is due to a different influence 
 from that which generally gives rise to this element of style. 
 As Wood berry truly says, " He played only to escape his 
 terror, and at last failed even in that." 
 
 " It has been objected to Hamlet that the sportiveness of 
 the prince mars the effect of his thoughtfulness. But it is 
 natural, when the mind is haunted and oppressed by any 
 painful idea which it is necessary to conceal, to seek relief and 
 at the same time increase the deception by a kind of play- 
 fulness. This is exemplified in Cowper's letters. 
 He reared his airy structures to keep his mind from being swept 
 away by a gloomy current. To this end he surrendered himself 
 to the most obvious pleasantry at hand. . . . Cowper 
 speculates on balloons with the charming playfulness that 
 marks the correspondence of a lively girl." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " His playful humor call it rather wit was at all times 
 prepared to construct out of the slenderest materials an amus- 
 ing incident. So ready and so graceful, in fact, was the poet's 
 fancy that he knew how to make an amusing story out of 
 nothing." Higgins (an old Neighbor). 
 
 Speaking of the well-known story of the suggestion of the 
 theme of " John Gilpin," Cowper's humorous masterpiece, 
 Southey says : " Lady Austen's conversation had as happy an 
 effect on the melancholy spirit of Cowper as the harp of David 
 had upon Saul." 
 18 
 
2/4 COWPER 
 
 "When Cowper was in good spirits his joy, intensified by 
 insensibility and past suffering, played like a fountain of light 
 over all the incidents of his quiet life. An ink-glass . 
 a halibut served up for dinner, a cat shut up in a drawer, 
 sufficed to elicit a little jet of poetical delight, the highest 
 and brightest jet of all being 'John Gilpin.' " Goldwin 
 Smith. 
 
 "He trifles because he is driven to it by necessity. His 
 most ludicrous verses have been written in his saddest moods." 
 Leslie Stephen. 
 
 Cowper confirms Stephen's statement ; for he once de- 
 clared, "The most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been 
 written in the saddest mood." 
 
 ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 " Away went Gilpin, neck or nought ; 
 Away went hat and wig ; 
 He little dreamt, when he set out, 
 Of running such a rig. 
 
 The wind did blow, the cloak did fly, 
 Like streamer long and gay, 
 Till loop and button failing both, 
 At last it flew away. 
 
 Then might all people well discern 
 The bottles he had slung ; 
 A bottle swinging at each side, 
 As hath been said or sung. 
 
 The dogs did bark, the children scream'd, 
 Up flew the windows all ; 
 And every soul cried out, ' Well done ! ' 
 As loud as he could bawl. 
 
 Away went Gilpin who but he ? 
 
 His fame soon spread around ; 
 
 ' He carries weight ! ' ' he rides a race ! ' 
 
 * 'Tis for a thousand pounds ! ' 
 
COWPER 275 
 
 And still as fast as he drew near, 
 'Twas wonderful to view 
 How in a trice the turnpike men, 
 Their gates wide open threw. 
 
 And now, as he went bowing down 
 His reeking head full low, 
 The bottles twain behind his back 
 Were shatter'd at a blow. 
 
 Down ran the wine into the road, 
 Most piteous to be seen, 
 Which made his horse's flanks to smoke 
 As they had basted been. 
 
 But still he seem'd to carry weight, 
 
 With leathern girdle braced ; 
 
 For all might see the bottle-necks 
 
 Still dangling at his waist." John Gilpiris Ride. 
 
 8. Sensitive Tenderness Sympathy. Woodberry 
 calls Cowper "The companionable, soft-hearted, pathetic 
 man, whose pastimes, whether in gardening or poetry or in 
 caring for his pets, were a refuge from the most poignant 
 anguish; " and Cowper wrote as a part of his own epitaph, 
 
 " His highest powers to the heart belong, 
 His virtue formed the magic of his song " 
 
 " Apart from his religion, Cowper was eminently human 
 and gentle-hearted ; the interest which he took in his tame 
 hares will perhaps be remembered when much of his wielding 
 of the divine thunderbolts against the profane shall have been 
 forgotten." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " He had too delicate and too pure a heart. 
 Poor charming soul, pinched like a frail flower transplanted 
 
COWPER 
 
 from a warm land to the snow ; the world's temperature was 
 too rough for it, and the moral law which should have sup- 
 ported it tore it with its thorns." Taine. 
 
 " The feminine delicacy and purity of Cowper's manners 
 and disposition, ... the singular gentleness and mod- 
 esty of his whole character, . . . make us indulgent to 
 his weaknesses and more delighted with his excellencies than 
 if he had been the centre of a circle of wits or the ornament 
 of a literary confederacy." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " The sonnet to Mary is so perfect in its beauty that it 
 could not but be universally admired ; but the lines to the 
 memory of his mother go down as deep into other hearts as 
 the love that inspired them in the depths of his own. . . . 
 The unequalled tenderness and pathos of this poem, and the 
 universal experience of the sweetness and preciousness of a 
 mother's love by which all hearts answer to its exquisite 
 touches, have rendered it the best appreciated and admired of 
 all Cowper's productions." G. B. Cheever. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " My mother ! when I learn'd that thou wast dead, 
 Say, wast thou conscious of the tears I shed ? 
 Hover'd thy spirit o'er thy sorrowing son, 
 Wretch even then, life's journey just begun ? 
 Perhaps thou gavest me, though unfelt, a kiss; 
 Perhaps a tear, if souls can weep in bliss 
 Ah, that maternal smile ! it answers Yes. 
 I heard the bell toll'd on thy burial day, 
 I saw the hearse that bore thee slow away, 
 And turning from my nursery window, drew 
 A long, long sigh, and wept a last adieu ! 
 But was it such? It was. Where thou art gone 
 Adieus and farewells are a sound unknown. 
 May I but meet thee on that peaceful shore, 
 The parting word shall pass my lips no more !" 
 
 On the Receipt of My Mother's Picture. 
 
COWPER 
 
 277 
 
 But ah! what wish can prosper, or what prayer, 
 
 From merchants rich in cargoes of despair, 
 
 Who drive a loathsome traffic, gauge and span 
 
 And buy the muscles and the bones of man ? 
 
 The tender ties of father, husband, friend, 
 
 All bonds of nature in that moment end ; 
 
 And each endures, while yet he draws his breath, 
 
 A stroke as fatal as the scythe of Death. 
 
 The sable warrior, frantic with regret 
 
 Of her he loves, and never can forget, 
 
 Loses in tears the far-receding shore, 
 
 But not the thought that they must meet no more ; 
 
 Deprived of her and freedom at a blow, 
 
 What has he left that he can yet forego ? " Charity. 
 
 " Thy indistinct expressions seem 
 Like language utter'd in a dream ; 
 Yet me they charm, whate'er the theme, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Thy silver locks, once auburn bright, 
 Are still more lovely in my sight 
 Than golden beams of orient light, 
 My Mary ! 
 
 For, could I view nor them nor thee, 
 What sight worth seeing could I see ? 
 The sun would rise in vain for me, 
 
 My Mary ! 
 
 Partakers of thy sad decline, 
 Thy hands their little force resign ; 
 Yet gently press'd, press gently mine. 
 My Mary!" 
 To Mary (Mrs. Unwiri). 
 
 9. Unconventional Morality Didacticism. 
 
 " Verse was deliberately adopted by Cowper at a mature age 
 as a means of usefulness. . . . He became a lay-preacher 
 
2/8 COWPER 
 
 in numbers. His object was to improve men, not like the 
 bard of Avon by powerfully unfolding their passions, nor 
 like Pope by pure satire, but rather through the quiet teach- 
 ings of the moralist." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " He says over and over again and his entire sincerity 
 lifts him above all suspicion of the affected self that he 
 looked upon his poetical works as at best innocent triflings 
 except so far as his poems were versified sermons. His inten- 
 tion was everywhere didactic, and his highest ambition was 
 to be a useful auxiliary to the prosaic exhortations of Dodd- 
 ridge, Watts, or his friend Newton." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " A genuine desire to make society better is always present 
 in his poems." Goldwin Smith. 
 
 1 'In the morality of his poems Cowper is honorably dis- 
 tinguished from most of his brethren. Our poets have too 
 often deviated into an incorrect system of morals, coldly de- 
 livered ; a smothered, polished, filed down Christianity ; a 
 medium system between the religion of the Gospel and the 
 heathen philosophy, and intended, apparently, to accom- 
 modate the two. In Gowper all is reality ; there is no doubt, 
 no vagueness of opinion ; the only satisfactory object on 
 which our affections can be fixed is distinctly and fully 
 pointed out. A perfect line is drawn between truth and 
 error. The heart is enlisted on the side of religion; every 
 precept is just, every motive efficacious. Sensible that every 
 vice is connected with the rest that the voluptuous will be- 
 come hard-hearted, and the unthinking licentious he aims 
 his shafts at all ; and as Gospel truth is the base of morality, so 
 is it the ground-work of his precepts." Quarterly Review ', 
 Vol. 16. 
 
 " He took his part in that great work which Samuel John- 
 son helped to do, and that was to make morality fashionable. 
 He had been in the world long enough to get polished ; he 
 went out of it early enough to be pure and unsophisticated." 
 George Dawson. 
 
COWPER 
 
 279 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Throughout mankind, the Christian kind at least, 
 There dwells a consciousness in every breast 
 That folly ends where genuine hope begins, 
 And he that finds his heaven must lose his sins. 
 Nature opposes, with her utmost force, 
 This riving stroke, this ultimate divorce ; 
 And while Religion seems to be her view, 
 Hates with a deep sincerity the true : 
 For this, of all that ever influenced man, 
 Since Abel worshipp'd or the world began, 
 This only spares no lust, admits no plea, 
 But makes him, if at all, completely free ; 
 Sounds forth the signal, as she mounts her car, 
 Of an eternal, universal war ; 
 Rejects all treaty, penetrates all wiles, 
 Scorns with the same indifference frowns and smiles ; 
 Drives through the realms of Sin where Riot reels, 
 And grinds his crown beneath her burning wheels." 
 
 Hope. 
 
 " Stand now and judge thyself Hast thou incurr'd 
 His anger who can waste thee with a word, 
 Who poises and proportions sea and land, 
 Weighing them in the hollow of his hand, 
 And in whose awful sight all nations seem 
 As grasshoppers, as dust, a drop, a dream ? 
 Hast thou (a sacrilege his soul abhors) 
 Claim'd all the glory of thy prosperous wars ? 
 Proud of thy fleets and armies, stolen the gem 
 Of his just praise to lavish it on them ? 
 Hast thou not learn'd, what thou art often told, 
 A truth still sacred and believed of old, 
 That no success attends on spears and swords 
 Unblest, and that the battle is the Lord's ? " 
 
 Expostulation . 
 
280 COWPER 
 
 " Young heads are giddy, and young hearts are warm, 
 And make mistakes for manhood to reform. 
 Boys are, at best, but pretty buds unblown, 
 Whose scent and hues are rather guess'd than known. 
 Each dreams that each is just what he appears, 
 But learns his error in maturer years, 
 When disposition, like a sail unfurl'd, 
 Shows all its rents and patches to the world. 
 If, therefore, even when honest in design, 
 A boyish friendship may so soon decline, 
 'Twere wiser sure to inspire a little heart 
 With just abhorrence for so mean a part 
 Than set your son to work at a vile trade 
 For wages so unlikely to be paid." Tirocinium. 
 
 10. Piety Cheerful Submissiveness. Macaulay 
 ys that religion was the muse of Cowper. Hayley, in his 
 famous epitaph on Cowper, calls him " Devotion's bard, de- 
 voutly just," and Tuckerman calls him, " A soul gratefully 
 recognizing the benignity of God, in the fresh verdure of 
 the myrtle and the mutual attachment of doves, and yet in- 
 credulous of his care for his own eternal destiny." 
 
 Cowper once wrote to his cousin, Lady Hesketh, " I know, 
 and have experience of it every day, that the mercy of God, 
 to him who believes himself the object of it, is more than 
 sufficient to compensate for the loss of every other blessing." 
 
 " ' Unassisted by the hope of divine favor ! ' This makes 
 the continual development of Cowper's piety most wonderful. 
 Here was the bush burning but not consumed. Here was the 
 faith of submission, reverence, love, glorifying God in the fires 
 as truly as was ever manifested in the fiery furnace." G. B. 
 Cheever. 
 
 "His life was as blameless as the water lilies which he 
 loved. . . . Whatever we may think of his religion or 
 the manner of it, there is no doubt that it indefinitely ex- 
 tended his poetic sympathy, and that in this extension of 
 sympathy we find ourselves in another world altogether than 
 
COWPER 28l 
 
 that of Dryden, Pope, or Gray. ... In Cowper the 
 poetry of human wrong begins that long, long cry against 
 oppression and evil done by man to man, . . . which 
 rings louder and louder through Burns, Coleridge, Words- 
 worth, Shelley, and Byron. . . . Cowper carried this 
 poetry of human wrong into the prisons with Howard and 
 into the cottages and lives of the poor. . . . But here 
 Cowper could not stop. He saw a higher liberty than any 
 on earth, a liberty without which political liberty was in vain, 
 with which even the slave felt free ; the liberty of heart de- 
 rived from heaven. Cowper struck the first note of revolu- 
 tionary poetry. He struck it in connection with God. 
 
 . . His tenderness for the weak and poor and wronged 
 is as sweet as his hatred of oppression is strong. 
 Cowper's poetry was drenched with theology. . . . His 
 religion led him to trace all moral guilt and folly to the 
 world's rejection of Christ. ... He looked abroad and 
 saw all men related to God, it mattered not of what nation, 
 caste, or color. . . . The range of his interest was as 
 wide as human life, and as he sketched he saw as the one 
 ideal and the one remedy for all the cross of Christ." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " He has a moral and religious sentiment that never aban- 
 dons him a gleam of St. Paul and the apostles, with the 
 appreciation of a comfort and well-being that the apostles 
 never knew." Sainte-Beuve. 
 
 " One very great task which Cowper accomplished was to 
 teach men of taste that men of piety are not necessarily dull- 
 ards and fools, and to teach men of piety that they need not 
 be coarse and vulgar. . . . He did this country an es- 
 sential service, which almost all the poets have been better 
 for. Since Cowper's days the greatest poets have been on 
 the side of the angels men as timorous about wrong-doing 
 as they are glorious in the praise of right. Wordsworth, 
 Coleridge, and Tennyson are in a direct line from Cowper. 
 
282 COWPER 
 
 It is a comfort to find a poet so pious as Cowper and 
 not a ' muff.' " George Dawson. 
 
 " It is not for himself that he rejoices only, but he feels in 
 his glowing heart the gladness and coming glory of the whole 
 universe. . . . The writings of Cowper testify every- 
 where to that grand sermon which is eternally preaching in 
 the open air that gospel of the field and forest, which, like 
 the gospel of Christ, is the voice of that love that overflows the 
 universe ; which puts down all sectarian bitterness in him 
 who listens to it ; which, being perfect, ' casts out all fear ; ' 
 against which the gloom of bigots and the terrors of fanatics 
 cannot stand. . . . Despairing even of God's mercy 
 and of salvation, his religious poetry is of the most cheerful 
 and triumphantly glad kind. 
 
 ' His soul exults, hope animates his lays. 
 The sense of mercy kindles into praise.' 
 
 Filled with this joyful assurance, wherever he turns his eyes 
 on the magnificent spectacle of creation, he finds themes of 
 noble gratulation . " William Hewitt. 
 
 " The career of Cowper was one to fill the pessimist with 
 perennial gladness. ... It might seem that nothing 
 short of malignity in the overruling powers could account 
 for the fiat that gave up so pure, simple, and cordial a nature 
 to be the prey of seven devils. . . . In 1766 every day 
 the time from breakfast till IT A.M. was spent [by Cowper] 
 in reading the Bible or sermons or in religious conversation ; 
 the hour from eleven to twelve was passed in church at ser- 
 vice ; in the afternoon there was a second period of religious 
 conversation or hymn singing ; at night there was commonly 
 another sermon and more psalms, and after that family 
 prayers. . . . This substitution of dogma for intuition 
 made religion . . . not a life but a disease. . . . His 
 letters are the effort of a creed-believing mind to get rid of 
 itself." . E. 'Woodberry. 
 
COWPER 283 
 
 He belongs emphatically to Christianity. ... If 
 the shield which, for eighteen centuries, Christ, by his 
 teaching and his death, has spread over the weak things 
 of this world should fail, and might should again become 
 the title to existence and the measure of worth, Cowper 
 will be cast aside as a specimen of despicable inferior- 
 ity. ' ' Goldwin Smith. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "O Lord, my best desire fulfil, 
 
 And help me to resign 
 Life, health, and comfort to thy will 
 And make thy pleasure mine. 
 
 Why should I shrink at thy command, 
 Whose love forbids my fears ? 
 
 Or tremble at the gracious hand 
 That wipes away my tears ? 
 
 No, let me rather freely yield 
 
 What most I prize to Thee ; 
 Who never hast a good withheld, 
 
 Or wilt withhold from me." Submission. 
 
 " Nor do we madly, like an impious world, 
 Who deem religion frenzy, and the God 
 That made them an intruder on their joys, 
 Start at his awful name, or deem his praise 
 A jarring note. Themes of a graver tone, 
 Exciting oft our gratitude and love, 
 While we retrace with Memory's pointing wand, 
 That calls the past to our exact review, 
 The dangers we have 'scaped, the broken snare, 
 The disappointed foe, deliverance found 
 Unlook'd for, life preserved and peace restored 
 Fruits of omnipotent eternal love." The Task. 
 
284 COWPER 
 
 Weak and irresolute is man ; 
 
 The purpose of to-day, 
 Woven with pains into his plan, 
 
 To-morrow rends away. 
 
 Bound on a voyage of awful length 
 
 And dangers little known, 
 A stranger to superior strength, 
 
 Man vainly trusts his own. 
 
 But oars alone can ne'er prevail 
 
 To reach the distant coast ; 
 The breath of Heaven must swell the sail, 
 
 Or all the toil is lost." Human Frailty. 
 
 II. Scriptural Allusions. As might be expected in a 
 writer of Cowper's peculiar religious habits, he abounds in 
 scriptural references and scriptural language. " Not only," 
 says Leslie Stephen, " is the bulk of his poetry directly re- 
 ligious or devotional, but on publishing The Task ' he as- 
 sures Newton that he has admitted none but scriptural images, 
 and has kept as closely as possible to scriptural language ; " 
 Cowper thus gives evidence that this characteristic was con- 
 scious and intentional. 
 
 "His entire design was to communicate the religious 
 views to which he was then a convert. He fancied that the 
 vehicle of verse might bring many to listen to truths which 
 they would he disinclined to have stated to them in simple 
 prose. And however tedious the recurrence of these theolog- 
 ical tenets may be, to the common reader, it is certain that a 
 portion of Cowper's peculiar popularity may be traced to their 
 expression." Walter age hot. 
 
COWPER 285 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The change shall please, nor shall it matter aught 
 Who works the wonder, if it be but wrought. 
 'Tis time, however, if the case stands thus, 
 For us plain folks and all who side with us 
 To build our altar, confident and bold, 
 And say, as stern Elijah said of old, 
 ' The strife now stands upon a fair award, 
 If Israel's Lord be God, then serve the Lord ; 
 If he be silent, faith is all a whim, 
 Then Baal is the God, and worship him.' " 
 
 Conversation. 
 
 Murmuring and ungrateful Discontent, 
 
 That scorns afflictions mercifully meant ; 
 
 Those humors, tart as wine upon the fret, 
 
 Which idleness and weariness beget, 
 
 These and a thousand plagues that haunt the breast, 
 
 Fond of the phantom of an earthly rest, 
 
 Divine communion chases, as the day 
 
 Drives to their dens the obedient beasts of prey. 
 
 See Judah's promised king, bereft of all, 
 
 Driven out an exile from the face of Saul ; 
 
 To distant caves the lonely wanderer flies, 
 
 To seek that peace a tyrant's frown denies." Retirement. 
 
 Have we not track'd the felon home, and found 
 His birthplace and his dam ? The country mourns, 
 Mourns because every plague that can infest 
 Society, and that saps and worms the base 
 Of the edifice that Policy has raised, 
 Swarms in all quarters ; meets the eye and ear, 
 And suffocates the breath at every turn. 
 Profusion breeds them ; and the cause itself 
 Of that calamitous mischief has been found 
 Found, too, where most offensive, in the skirts 
 Of the robed pedagogue ! Else let the arraign'd 
 Stand up unconscious and refute the charge. 
 So, when the Jewish leader stretch'd his arm, 
 
286 COWPER 
 
 And waved his rod divine, a race obscene, 
 Spawn'd in the muddy beds of Nile, came forth, 
 Polluting Egypt : gardens, fields, and plains 
 Were covered with the pest; the streets were filPd ; 
 The croaking nuisance lurk' d- in every nook ; 
 Nor palaces nor even chambers 'scaped ; 
 And the land stank so numerous was the fry." 
 
 The Task. 
 
 12. Simplicity Genuineness Naturalness. - 
 
 " His verses are full of personal emotions, genuinely felt, never 
 altered or disguised." Taine. 
 
 " He had preserved in no common measure the innocence 
 of childhood." Macaulay. 
 
 11 An earnest, tender writer and true poet enough to be 
 true to himself." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " Cowper's virtue was in his simplicity and his genuine- 
 ness, rare qualities then. . . . His good fortune was in 
 never belonging to the literary set or bowing to the town 
 taste." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " He delivered English verse from the graveclothes of 
 French drapery, and bade it come forth and live in its own 
 natural manly life. . . . There is the classic slang. I hate 
 it. I heartily wish some one would put Pegasus out of the 
 way. The muses are a set of old frumps, and I heartily 
 wish some one would pension off the whole ' tuneful nine ' of 
 them, so that I may never hear of them again. I am weary 
 and sick of Mars and Jove and Helicon and Ilissus and the 
 whole collection of stage properties. When I leave these for 
 4 The Task ' it is like walking out of an evening party into the 
 fresh moonlight, under the glorious stars, and talking about 
 them, not finely, but simply, heartily, plainly, truly. I re- 
 gard Latin verse, Greek verse, and piano-strumming as the 
 three-headed Moloch to which England offers up brains and 
 sense. . . . Cowper wrote English poetry into the Eng- 
 lish language." George Daw sen. 
 
COWPER 287 
 
 " No English poet has ever excelled Covvper when he writes 
 of the daily human affections. In him, one might almost say, 
 began in English poetry that direct, close, impassioned repre- 
 sentation, in the least sensational manner, of such common re- 
 lations as motherhood, filial piety, friendship, married love, 
 the relation of man to animals and in him they are made re- 
 ligious. . . . Cowper's treatment of all moral subjects is 
 distinguished from his treatment of his personal religion by an 
 essential manliness of tone. Nowhere in our poetry is there 
 heard a finer scorn of vanity, ambition, meanness ; nowhere is 
 truth more nobly exalted or justice more sternly glori- 
 fied. . . . Cowper talks as naturally of all men as Pope 
 did of one or two classes of men." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " There is something in the sweetness and facility of the 
 diction that diffuses a charm over the whole collection [of 
 Cowper's letters] and communicates an interest that is not 
 often commanded by performances of greater dignity and pre- 
 tension. ' ' Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 11 His observation was remarkably nice and true in certain de- 
 partments of life. . . . The most truly poetic phases of 
 Cowper's verse are the portions devoted to rural and domestic 
 subjects. Here he was at home and alive to every impression. ' ' 
 H. T. Tucker man. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " No noise is here, or none that hinders thought. 
 The redbreast warbles still, but is content 
 With slender notes and more than half suppress'd ; 
 Pleased with his solitude and flitting light 
 From spray to spray, where'er he rests he shakes 
 From many a twig the pendant drops of ice 
 That tinkle in the wither'd leaves below. 
 Stillness, accompanied with sounds so soft, 
 Charms more than silence. Meditation here 
 May think down hours to moments. Here the heart 
 May give a useful lesson to the head, 
 And Learning wiser grow without his books." 7^he 7 ask. 
 
288 COWPER 
 
 A poet's cat, sedate and grave 
 As poet well could wish to have, 
 Was much addicted to inquire 
 For nooks to which she might retire, 
 And where, secure as mouse in chink, 
 She might repose, or sit and think. 
 I know not where she caught the trick 
 Nature perhaps herself had cast her 
 In such a mould philosophique, 
 Or else she learn'd it of her master. 
 Sometimes ascending, debonair, 
 An apple-tree or lofty pear, 
 Lodged with convenience in the fork, 
 She vvatch'd the gardener at his work ; 
 Sometimes her ease and solace sought 
 In an old empty watering-pot : 
 There, wanting nothing save a fan, 
 To seem some nymph in her sedan 
 Apparell'd in exactest sort, 
 And ready to be borne to court." 
 
 The Retired Cat. 
 
 Whence is it that, amazed, I hear 
 
 From yonder wither'd spray, 
 This foremost morn of all the year, 
 
 The melody of May ? 
 
 And why, since thousands would be proud 
 
 Of such a favor shown, 
 Am I selected from the crowd 
 
 To witness it alone ? 
 
 Sing'st thou, sweet Philomel, to me 
 
 For that I also long 
 Have practised in the groves like thee, 
 
 Though not like thee in song ? " 
 
 To the Nightingale. 
 
KEATS, 1795-1821 
 
 Biographical Outline. John Keats, born October 31, 
 1795, at Moorfields, London ; father a livery-stable employe ; 
 the childhood home of Keats is at the stable in Finsbury 
 Circus; the family remove in 1801 to Craven Street, City 
 Road ; Keats is put into an excellent school in his eighth 
 year; in April, 1804, his father is killed in an accident, and 
 his mother marries one William Raw lings, a stable-keeper, 
 but is soon separated from him ; Keats' s mother then retires 
 with her children to her father's home at Edmonton ; the 
 maternal grandfather dies in March, 1805, and leaves a for- 
 tune of ^13,000, which places Keats in easy circumstances 
 during his youth ; he attends school at Enfield, where he 
 forms a friendship with Charles Cowden Clark, an usher and 
 a son of the master; as a boy, Keats is "of extraordinary 
 mettle, vivacity, and promise," courageous, high-minded, 
 and generous ; after two school years of " fighting and 
 frolic," he begins to study and read voraciously, devouring 
 much literature, criticism, and classical mythology ; he leaves 
 school with a fair knowledge of Latin and general history and 
 some acquaintance with French; although a " true Greek," 
 he knew nothing of the language of Greece ; Keats's mother, 
 to whom he was passionately devoted, died in February, 1810, 
 and in the July following Keats's maternal grandmother places 
 him, with his sister and brothers, in the care of two guardi- 
 ans, and makes over about ^"8,000 to be held in trust for 
 their use ; at the direction of Mr. Abbey, one of the trustees, 
 John is withdrawn from school in 1810, at the close of his 
 fifteenth year, and is apprenticed for five years to a surgeon 
 
 289 
 
KEATS 
 
 at Edmonton ; his duties here permit frequent visits to his 
 old school at Enfield, where Cowden Clark encourages him to 
 continue his literary studies, especially in the Elizabethan 
 writers; Spenser's ''Faery Queene " arouses his enthusiasm 
 and fires his ambition to become a poet ; his lines " In Imi- 
 tation of Spenser" are said to have been the first he wrote, 
 and are ascribed to his sixteenth or eighteenth year; a fellow 
 surgeon's apprentice at the time describes Keats as " an idle, 
 loafing fellow, always writing poetry." 
 
 Late in the autumn of 1814 he quarrels with his master, 
 possibly because he had neglected medicine for poetry, and goes 
 to live by himself in London ; the death of his grandfather 
 and of his only other adult relative about this time throws 
 Keats and his brother and sister upon the mercy of Abbey, 
 their "meddling" guardian; on reaching London, Keats 
 continues his medical studies at the hospital of Saint Thomas 
 and Saint Guys ; at first, he lodges at 8 Dean Street, with two 
 other students ; Keats is a capable student at the hospital, and 
 does not shirk the routine work ; but his room-mate writes 
 that " his absolute devotion to poetry prevented his having any 
 other tastes or indulging in any vice;" in February, 1815, 
 he writes the address " To Hope " and the " Sonnet to Leigh 
 Hunt," to honor that writer's release from prison; during 
 the same year, or earlier, he writes two posthumous sonnets to 
 Byron and Chatterton, the series beginning " Woman When 
 I Behold Thee, Flippant, Vain," and his famous sonnet " On 
 First Looking into Chapman's Homer ; " the latter was com- 
 posed during the summer, just after a night's reading with 
 Cowden Clark, who had come to reside in Clerkenwell ; in 
 November, 1815, Keats writes his rhymed epistle to Felton 
 Mathew, and in the following February his valentine, " Hadst 
 Thou Lived in the Days of Old," addressed to the future wife 
 of his brother George ; in the spring of 1816, through Cowden 
 Clark, Keats meets Leigh Hunt, who soon becomes his inti- 
 mate friend and stimulates him along romantic lines, but un- 
 
KEATS 291 
 
 fortunately also brings upon Keats the obloquy already mani- 
 fested toward himself by the conservative critics. 
 
 On March 3, 1816, Keats is appointed dresser in Guy's 
 Hospital, and on the 25th of the following July he passes 
 creditably an examination as licentiate at Apothecaries' Hall; 
 his first printed verse was the sonnet beginning " O Solitude, 
 if I with Thee Might Dwell," which appeared in Leigh Hunt's 
 Examiner, May 5,1816; at the home of Hunt Keats receives 
 much literary inspiration, and meets there Shelley and J. H. 
 Reynolds, with whom he forms a close and lasting friendship; 
 he develops a brotherly intimacy, also, with Reynolds's sis- 
 ters, one of whom afterward married Thomas Hood ; in the 
 summer of 1816 Keats removes his lodgings to the Poultry, to 
 be near his brothers, then employed in the counting-house of 
 Mr. Abbey, but spends most of his time at the home of Hunt 
 in the "Vale of Health" at Hampstead, "where a bed was 
 always ready for him in the library ; " this is the house cel- 
 ebrated in Keats's verses " Sleep and Poetry; " during the 
 summer of 1817 he also writes at Hunt's house the verses be- 
 ginning " I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill," intended as part 
 of a poem on the myth of Endymion, and the fragment called 
 " Calidore ; " in the early autumn he is at Margate, where 
 he writes the epistles to his brother George and Cowden Clark 
 and the sonnet beginning " Many the Wonders I This Day 
 Have Seen ; " on his return to London lodgings he writes the 
 sonnets "To My Brother" and "Keen, Fitful Gusts Are 
 Whispering;" his familiar letters to friends and relatives, 
 which form such an attractive picture in his later years, be- 
 gin in the autumn of 1817. 
 
 In November, 1817, through Hunt, Keats meets the paint- 
 er Haydon, to whom he addresses the sonnet " Great Spirits 
 Now on Earth Sojourning ; " the result is a warm friendship 
 between the two and a marked influence over Keats by Hay- 
 don ; during the same month Hunt publishes in his Examiner 
 Keats's sonnet "On Looking into Chapman's Homer," and 
 
292 KEATS 
 
 calls attention to the author's poetic ability, coupling his 
 name with Shelley's ; four others of Keats' s sonnets appear in 
 the Examiner during the following spring, and " his poetic 
 vocation seems to have been sealed ; ' ' although he has per- 
 formed some successful operations as a surgeon, Keats deter- 
 mines, against the remonstrance of his guardian, Mr. Abbey, 
 to abandon the profession of surgery and to bring out a vol- 
 ume of his verses ; Shelley at first advises Keats to withhold 
 his verses, but afterward helps him to find a publisher ; the 
 volume appears in March, 1817, with a dedication to Leigh 
 Hunt ; the book has no sale, and Keats's brothers are dis- 
 gusted ; in April, 1817, on the advice of Haydon, Keats 
 goes alone to the Isle of Wight, that he may " be alone to 
 improve himself," and takes lodgings at Shanklin, where he 
 writes his " Ode on the Sea," published in the Champion for 
 August, 1817, and continues his " Endymion," begun but 
 abandoned long before ; he is aided financially by the pub- 
 lishers of the London Magazine, who agree to publish 
 " Endymion " when completed, and allow Keats to draw on 
 them in advance ; in May he goes to Margate, where he is 
 joined by his brother Tom ; they go thence to Canterbury for 
 several weeks, and in the midsummer of 1817 the three broth- 
 ers are together at Hampstead in Welhvalk ; here Keats forms 
 a fast friendship with C. W. Dilke and C. A. Brown, liter- 
 ary men who live at Lawn Bank in John Street ; he declines 
 to visit Shelley at Great Marlow, " in order that he might," 
 as he said, " have his own unfettered scope ; " he spends the 
 month of September, 1817, at Oxford, at the home of a friend, 
 and begins there his letters to his young sister Fannie ; while 
 here, also, he first shows signs of poor health ; he had hereto- 
 fore been robust, and, during 1817 or 1818, had thrashed a 
 butcher at Hampstead ; he returns to London in October, and 
 finds a quarrel on between Hunt and Haydon and some cool- 
 ness in Hunt toward himself; Keats spends the last part of 
 November at Burford Bridge, near Dorking, where he finishes 
 
KEATS 293 
 
 "Endymion," completing the work exactly within the time 
 he had allowed himself for it ; here he also studies Shake- 
 speare's minor poems and sonnets ; he returns to Hampstead 
 in December ; in the early winter he writes for the Champion 
 three short pieces of dramatic criticism, including that on 
 " Richard III. ; " during the winter he reads the proofs of 
 " Endymion," enjoys himself socially, and, through Haydon, 
 meets Wordsworth, who, when Keats recites his " Hymn to 
 Pan " from " Endymion," by Wordsworth's request, calls it 
 " a pretty piece of paganism ; " during the winter Keats also 
 meets William Godwin, Charles Lamb, and Hazlitt, whose 
 lectures he regularly attends ; during the winter he also writes 
 several minor poems and sonnets, including those begin- 
 ning "O Golden-tongued Romance with Serene Lute" and 
 " Time's Sea Has Been Five Years at Its Slow Ebb " and those 
 entitled "The Nile" (written February 4th, in competition 
 with Hunt and Shelley), "To Apollo," " To Robin Hood, " 
 and " On Seeing a Lock of Milton's Hair." 
 
 In March, 1818, Keats goes to Teignmouth to nurse his 
 invalid brother Tom; he remains until about May i5th, 
 and while at Teignmouth writes "Isabella" and the preface 
 to "Endymion," and studies " Paradise Lost" with a view 
 to writing his " Hyperion ; " he writes here, also, his metri- 
 cal epistle to Reynolds ; returning with his brother to Hamp- 
 stead, he remains five weeks; meantime "Endymion" ap- 
 pears, but attracts little attention ; after the marriage and 
 emigration of his brother George to America, in June, 1818, 
 Keats starts on a walking tour with his friend Charles Armi- 
 tage Brown through the Lake District and Scotland ; they 
 visit Lancaster, Windermere, Ambleside, Derwent- water, 
 Keswick, Carlisle, Dumfries, The Giant's Causeway, Glas- 
 gow, the Trossachs, the Hebrides, and Inverness ; during the 
 trip Keats writes many letters and verses, but only his " Meg 
 Merrilies " and his " Fingal's Cave " are worth preservation ; 
 the exposure in tramping in the Highlands brings on a throat 
 
294 KEATS 
 
 trouble, from which Keats never recovered ; by the advice of 
 a physician he sails at once from Cromarty for London, and 
 reaches his Hampstead lodgings August i8th ; for the next 
 three and a half months he nurses his dying brother Tom, 
 while his loneliness and the insulting criticisms of his " En- 
 dymion " in Blackwood 's Magazine and the Quarterly Re- 
 view discourage Keats and injure his health ; but he rallies, 
 and declares, " I think I shall be among the English poets 
 after my death ; " much sympathy for him is privately ex- 
 pressed, and an anonymous adviser sends him ^25. 
 
 In October, 1818, he begins his series of long journal-let- 
 ters addressed to his brother in America ; he had begun to 
 write "Hyperion" in September; soon afterward he writes 
 "I never was in love, yet the voice and shape of a woman 
 have haunted me these two days. . . . This morning 
 poetry has conquered, I have relapsed into those abstractions 
 which are my only life. . . . There is an awful warmth 
 about my heart, like a load of immortality " ; this first at- 
 traction appears transitory, but Keats soon finds " his real 
 enslaver " in the person of Fanny Brawne, a girl of seventeen, 
 daughter of a widow living in Downshire Street, near by ; 
 Keats describes her to his brother as " beautiful and elegant, 
 graceful, silly, fashionable, and strange ; " although she seems 
 to have had little appreciation of Keats's gifts and little consid- 
 eration for his circumstances and temperament, Miss Brawne 
 becomes engaged to him during the winter ; she seems to 
 have been an accomplished flirt, and entered freely into social 
 pleasures from which Keats's health and occupations debarred 
 him ; his brother Tom dies December i, 1818, and Keats 
 immediately complies with Brown's invitation to come and 
 keep house with him at Wentworth Place ; he works, during 
 the winter, on "Hyperion," and sends to his American 
 friends his two lyrics, " Bards of Passion and of Mirth " and 
 " Ever Let the Fancy Roam ; " late in January, 1819, he 
 goes with Brown to Sussex, where they visit Dilke and other 
 
KEATS 295 
 
 mutual friends; while at Bedhampton, in the house of Mr. 
 John Snook, Keats writes "The Eve of St. Agnes," ap- 
 parently composed in part before, and begins his fragment, 
 " The Eve of St. Mark ; " he returns to Wentworth Place 
 in February, and, during the ensuing spring, with no sanguine 
 belief in their success or care for their preservation, he com- 
 poses there his finest meditative odes, including " On Indo- 
 lence," "To Psyche," " To a Nightingale," and probably 
 " To Melancholy ; " the ode " To a Nightingale " was first 
 printed in July, 1819, in "The Annals of the Fine Arts ; " 
 during the same spring he writes the ballad "La Belle Dame 
 sans Merci" (which he copies for his brother "with laugh- 
 ing comment, as if it were nothing at all "), his " Chorus of 
 Fairies," written for a projected mask or opera, and his son- 
 nets beginning "Why Did I Laugh To-night?" and "As 
 Hermes Took to His Feathers Light," besides the two on 
 "Fame" and that "To Sleep;" "La Belle Dame sans 
 Merci" was printed by Hunt in the Indicator, May 20, 1820, 
 with the signature " Canone; " meantime Keats is worried by 
 failing health, unrequited love, the contempt of literary crit- 
 ics, and financial troubles; during the summer of 1819 his 
 supplies from his guardian are entirely stopped for a time, 
 while Haydon and other friends to whom Keats had loaned 
 over ^200 are unable to pay him ; he had " no extravagancies 
 of his own." and seems to have forgotten his share in the 
 direct legacy under his grandfather's will ; he seriously con- 
 templates abandoning literature and taking up journalism or 
 surgery for a living ; he is dissuaded by Brown, who seems 
 fully to have appreciated Keats, and who loans him money 
 for his needs during the summer ; Keats and Brown then go 
 to join their friend Rice at Shanklin, where the two begin to 
 collaborate on a tragedy on Otho the Great, Brown making 
 the plot and Keats writing the dialogue ; Keats also begins 
 his " Lamia " at Shanklin ; on August i2th Keats and Brown 
 remove to Winchester, hoping thus to improve Keats's health ; 
 
296 KEATS 
 
 he is better at Winchester, where he remains two months, and 
 where he and Brown finish " Otho the Great," while Keats 
 begins a new tragedy, completes " Lamia," adds to the " The 
 Eve of St. Mark," and writes his ode to "Autumn;" 
 meantime he studies Italian zealously, and writes long letters 
 to America, in which he determines "to cease fretting and 
 face life bravely; " he takes a lodging at 25 College Street, 
 London, settles there October 10, 1819, and tries to get em- 
 ployment as dramatic critic on London journals ; he also pro- 
 poses " to write on the liberal side of the question for whoever 
 will pay me ; ' ' but consumption and hypochondria soon take 
 possession of him ; on October i6th he settles with Brown 
 at Westminster, so as to be next door to \\i& fiancee t and " from 
 this time forth he knew neither peace of mind nor health of 
 body again ; ' ' about this time ' ' Otho the Great ' ' is re- 
 jected, without examination, by the management of the Covent 
 Garden Theatre, and is provisionally accepted by the manage- 
 ment of Drury Lane; November 17, 1819, Keats writes to 
 his publishers: " The writing of a few fine plays is still my 
 greatest ambition, when I do feel ambitious, which is very sel- 
 dom ;" inspired with Byron's success with " Beppo " and 
 " Don Juan," Keats plans a fairy poem, which he begins un- 
 der the title " Cap and Bells ; " about this time he writes to 
 Fanny Brawne in " piteous love-plaints," published posthu- 
 mously, poems which he would doubtless never have vol- 
 untarily published ; he completes eighty-eight Spenserian 
 stanzas, which are signed with the nom de plume " Lucy 
 Vaughn Lloyd;" at the same time he takes up "Hyper- 
 ion," which had been thrown aside for six months, amplifies 
 and recasts it, and prepares the allegorical preamble ; this 
 recast has often wrongly been taken for a first revision, as 
 it is greatly inferior to the original poem ; it reflects Keats's 
 bitterness and despondency at the time; he seems at this 
 time to have sought relief from his "rooted misery" in 
 some dissipation, which only aggravated his maladies ; he 
 
KEATS 297 
 
 begins taking laudanum, but abandons it on Brown's remon- 
 strance. 
 
 From Christmas, 1819, he gives up writing on " Cap and 
 Bells " and " The Vision," and is confined to his home most 
 of the time by ill-health ; he receives a flying visit in January, 
 1820, from his brother George, who finds Keats "not a sane 
 being;" on February 3, 1820, after a night-ride outside a 
 coach from London to Hampstead, he is seized with a hem- 
 orrhage ; nervous prostration follows, and Keats is confined 
 to his bed for six weeks, meantime tenderly nursed by Brown 
 and exchanging daily notes with Fanny Brawne ; partially re- 
 gaining his strength in March, he goes with Brown to Graves- 
 end, and returns to a lodging in Wesleyan Place, Kentish 
 Farm, so as to be near Leigh Hunt, while Brown makes 
 another tour in Scotland ; here Keats reads the proof of a vol- 
 ume of poems written after " Endymion " and published in 
 July, 1820, under the title of " Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of 
 St. Agnes, and Other Poems ; " all the poems of this volume, 
 which made Keats immortal, were written between March, 
 1818, and October, 1819; he says, "I feel sure I should 
 write, from the mere yearning and tenderness I have for the 
 beautiful, even if my night's labors should be burnt every morn- 
 ing and no eye ever rest upon them ; " this volume opens the 
 eyes of critics like Lamb and Shelley to Keats' s true genius, 
 while even Jeffrey at once writes a laudatory critique in the 
 Edinburgh Review; but fresh hemorrhages, followed by in- 
 creased despondency and weakness, come to Keats in June ; 
 the Hunts take him into their home and nurse him tenderly, 
 but his jealous misery causes him to distrust his best friends ; 
 on August 1 2th he leaves Hunt's house, charging him with 
 opening a letter from Fanny Brawne, and is taken in by the 
 latter's mother in Wentworth Place. 
 
 On partially regaining strength, he determines to go to 
 Italy for his health ; he declines Shelley's cordial invitation 
 to visit him in Pisa, and sails from London, September 18, 
 
298 KEATS 
 
 1820, with his more intimate friend, the painter Severn ; on 
 the voyage toward Rome he lands for a day on the Dorset 
 coast, where he composes his last poem, the sonnet beginning 
 " Bright star, would I were as steadfast as thou art ; " he pro- 
 jects, also, but does not write a poem on " Sabrina ; " after 
 a month's voyage he and Severn reach Naples ; he declines a 
 second invitation to visit Shelley, and starts with Severn for 
 Rome about November i2th ; at Rome they take lodgings in 
 the Piazza, di Spagna, where Keats spends the last three 
 months of his life ; after a violent relapse in December, he 
 begs Severn to let him end his life with laudanum ; Severn 
 nurses him assiduously ; during the last days Keats reads much 
 in Jeremy Taylor's "Holy Living and Dying," and is con- 
 soled by Severn's playing of Haydn's sonatas ; he daily asks 
 his physician, " When will this posthumous life of mine come 
 to an end?" and asks that his epitaph be, "Here lies one 
 whose name was writ in water ; " he dies at Rome, in Severn's 
 arms, February 23, 1821, and is buried there in the old Prot- 
 estant cemetery ; Severn was buried by his side in 1881. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON KEATS. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 I : 218-247 and 2 : 303-32 7. 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Arnold). New York, 1881, Mac- 
 
 millan, 4: 427-463. 
 Jeffrey, F., "Modern British Essayists." Boston, 1856, Sampson, 
 
 6:413-419. 
 Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 
 
 2: 100-122. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 
 
 i : 350-354. 
 
 Morley, J., "English Men of Letters" (Colvin). New York, 1887, 
 Harper, v. index. 
 
 Milnes, B. M. (Lord Houghton), " Life and Letters of Keats." Lon- 
 don, 1867, Moxon, 1-334. 
 
 Rossetti, W. M., "Life of Keats." London, 1887, Walter Scott, v. 
 index. 
 
KEATS 299 
 
 Clarke, C. and M. C, "Recollections of Writers." New York, 1879, 
 
 Scribner, 120-158. 
 De Quincey, T., " Works." Edinburgh, 1890, A. & C. Black, i : 377- 
 
 394- 
 Shelley, P. B., "Adonais." New York, 1870, J. Miller (Works), 
 
 3: 154-169. 
 Hunt, L., " Selections from English Poets," Philadelphia, 1854, W. P. 
 
 Hazard, 230-255. 
 Mitford, M. R , " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1852, 
 
 Harper, 9-21. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 
 
 Macmillan, 3 : v. index. 
 Mabie, H. W., "Essays in Literary Interpretation." New York, 1892, 
 
 Dodd, Mead & Co., 138-175. 
 Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 
 
 London, 1885, Murray, 159-194. 
 Devey, J., "A Comparative Estimate." London, 1873, Moxon, 
 
 263-274. 
 Swinburne, " Encyclopaedia *Britannica." New York, 1882, Scribner, 
 
 14: 22-24. 
 Haydon, B. F., "Correspondence and Table Talk." London, 1876, 
 
 2: 1-17. 
 Howitt, W., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge, 292-300. 
 Hunt, L., "Lord Byron and Some Contemporaries." London, 1828, 
 
 246-268. 
 
 Masson, D., " Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats." London, 1874, Mac- 
 millan, 143-191. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Characteristics of Literature." Philadelphia, 
 
 1849, 256-269. 
 Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature and Life." Boston, 1890, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 47-66. 
 
 Caine, H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Stock, 158-190. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 
 
 Francis, 238-250. 
 Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 
 
 349-362. 
 Morley, J., "English Men of Letters " (Colvin). New York, 1887, 
 
 Harper, 50-66 and 207-218. 
 Keats, J., "Letters to Fanny Brawne." London, n. d., Reeves & 
 
 Turner, v. index. 
 Keats, J., " Letters to his Family." London, 1891, Macmillan, 11-19. 
 
300 KEATS 
 
 Houghton, Lord, " Life and Letters of John Keats." London, 1867, 
 
 Moxon, v. index. 
 Dawson, W. J., " Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 
 
 Whittaker, 48-60. 
 
 Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." London, 1845, Tait, I : 372-385. 
 Dennis, J., "Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, J. B. Young, 
 
 365-373. 
 
 Owen, F. M., "John Keats, a Study." London, 1880, Kegan Paul & 
 Co., v. index. 
 
 Holmes, O. W., " After a Lecture on Keats." Boston, 1891, hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co. (Works), I : 226-227. 
 
 Lang, A., " Letters on Literature." London, 1889, Longmans, Green 
 & Co., 55-67. 
 
 Lester, J. W., "Criticisms." London, 1853, Longmans, 343-349. 
 
 Dilke, C. W., " Papers of a Critic." London, 1875, Murray, I : 2-14. 
 
 Century, 5:599-610 (E. C. Stedman); Century, 28 (50) : 910-914 
 (H. Van Dyke). 
 
 Manhattan Review, 3 : 489-498 (J. Benton). 
 
 Critic, 5 : 181-182 (J. Benton). 
 
 Academy, 24 : 407-408 (E. Gosse). 
 
 Forum, 21 : 420-424 (T. W. Higginson). 
 
 Canadian Monthly, 15 : 449-454 (E. Fawcett). 
 
 Scribner's Monthly, 15 : 203-213 and 402-417 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 
 Tail's Magazine, 13 : 249-254 (De Quincey). 
 
 Appleton's Magazine, 19 : 379-382 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 
 Southern Literary Messenger, 8: 37-41 (H. T. Tuckerman). 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 3 : 1-16 (D. Masson); 58: 311-320 (S. Colvin). 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 34: 203-213 (F. Jeffrey). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Love of Beauty. In his last days Keats wrote : 
 " If I should die, I have left no immortal works behind me ; 
 but I have loved the principle of beauty in all things." 
 
 " He had an unerring instinct for the poetic use of things, 
 and for him they had no other use. We are apt to talk of 
 the classic renaissance as of a phenomenon long past, nor 
 ever to be returned, and to think the Greeks and Romans 
 alone had the mighty magic to work such a miracle. To me, 
 one of the most interesting aspects of Keats is that in him we 
 
KEATS 301 
 
 have an example of the renaissance going on almost under 
 our own eyes, and that the intellectual ferment was in him 
 kindled by a purely English leaven." Lowell. 
 
 "The truth is that the yearning passion for the Beautiful 
 which was with Keats, as he himself truly says, the master- 
 passion, is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental man, 
 is not a passion of the sensuous or sentimental poet. It is an 
 intellectual and spiritual passion. It is, as he again says, 
 1 the mighty abstract idea of Beauty in all things.' 
 He has made himself remembered and remembered as no 
 merely sensuous poet could be ; and he has done it by having 
 ' loved the principle of beauty in all things.' ... By 
 virtue of his feeling for beauty and of his perception of the 
 vital connexion of beauty with truth, Keats accomplished so 
 much in poetry, that in one of the two great modes by which 
 poetry interprets, in the faculty of naturalistic interpretation, 
 in what we call natural magic, he ranks with Shakespeare. 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " Keats, youthful and prodigal, the magician of unnum- 
 bered beauties, which neither author nor reader can think of 
 counting or assessing, is the Keats of our affection. Mature 
 him, and he would be a more perfect planner and executant, 
 and promoted to yet loftier office among the immortals ; but 
 he could not win upon us more, could not leave us a more 
 lovely memory nor so priceless a treasure of regret. . . . 
 The susceptibility which is visible in his poems to all forms 
 of beauty and delight, and the unexhausted inspiration and 
 spontaneous flow which they exhibit, needed nothing but one 
 small impulsion to rouse him and start him on his course." 
 W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " There is no descent into his soul of that spirit of beauty, 
 that 'awful loveliness,' before whose presence the poet's 
 sensations are stilled, and in whose celebration his language 
 is adoration. In the place of this, there is an all-absorbing 
 relish and delicate perception of beauty a kind of feeding 
 
302 KEATS 
 
 on ' nectared sweets ' a glow of delight in the abandonment 
 of the soul to soft and delicious images, framed by fancy out 
 of rich sensations. ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' is del- 
 
 icately beautiful, and perfect of its kind. . . . The sense 
 of luxury is its predominant characteristic, and though full of 
 exquisite fancies, it has no grand imaginations. . . . 
 That the poetry of Keats is full of beauties, that it evinces a 
 most remarkable richness and sensitiveness of imagination, 
 is cheerfully acknowledged by everyone who reads 
 poetry without having his fancy and imagination shut in by 
 prejudice." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 11 In what other English poet are you so certain of never 
 opening a page without lighting upon the loveliest imagery 
 and the most eloquent expressions ? Name one. Com- 
 pare any succession of their pages at random, and see if the 
 young poet is not sure to present his stock of beauty ; crude, 
 it may be, in many instances ; too indiscriminate in general ; 
 never, perhaps, thoroughly perfect in cultivation ; but there 
 it is, exquisite of its kind and filling envy with despair." 
 'Leigh Hunt. 
 
 " Meek child of earth ! thou wilt not shame 
 
 The sweet dead poet's holy name ; 
 
 The god of music gave thee birth, 
 
 Called from the crimson-spotted earth, 
 
 Where, sobbing his young life away, 
 
 His own fair Hyacinthus lay. 
 
 The hyacinth my garden gave 
 
 Shall lie upon that Roman grave ! " 
 
 O. W. Holmes. 
 
 "Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen, lovelier 
 it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see. . . . 
 The faultless force and the profound subtlety of this deep and 
 cunning instinct for the absolute expression of absolute nat- 
 ural beauty can hardly be questioned or overlooked ; and 
 this is doubtless the one main distinctive gift or power which 
 
KEATS 303 
 
 denotes him as a poet among all his equals, and gives him 
 right to a rank forever beside Coleridge and Shelley. . . . 
 Of these [Odes] perhaps the two nearest to absolute perfec- 
 tion, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of 
 the very utmost beauty possible to human words, may be that 
 to Autumn and that on a Grecian Urn." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " He lived in a sort of ecstasy during no small portion of 
 these solitary hours, when he would call the wind his wife, 
 the stars through the window-panes his children, and rest 
 contented in the abstract idea of beauty in all things. . . . 
 Although to Keats the worship of beauty in all things was 
 the essence of his life, and the delight that sprang from it the 
 essence of his joy, he did not find in these the whole of life." 
 G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " When the ' Endymion ' comes to be critically considered, 
 it will be found that its excellence consists in its clear com- 
 prehension of that ancient spirit of beauty, to which Keats's 
 outward perceptions so excellently ministered, and which un- 
 dertook to ennoble and purify, as far as was consistent with 
 their physical existence, the instinctive desires of mankind." 
 Mary Russell Mitford. 
 
 " Keats wrote the famous sonnet [on Chapman's Homer] 
 and struck for the first time that rich and mellow note, res- 
 onant of a beauty deeper even than its own magical cad-ence, 
 heard for the first time in English poetry. The sonnet has 
 an amplitude of serene beauty which makes it the fitting pre- 
 lude of Keats's later works. ... It was no obvious and 
 superficial beauty which mirrored itself in his soul and which 
 he was to give back line for line. His springs were in the 
 secret places, fed by the spirit of God and discovered alone 
 by those who hold the divining-rod of genius. 
 ' The Eve of St. Agnes ' a vision of beauty, deep, rich, and 
 glowing as one of those dyed windows in which the heart of 
 the Middle Ages still burns. The beauty of his work has by 
 strange lack of insight been taken as evidence of its defect in 
 
304 KEATS 
 
 range and depth. It is not beauty of form and color alone 
 which gives the ' Ode on a Grecian Urn ' and the ode 'To 
 Autumn ' their changeless spell ; it is that interior beauty of 
 which Keats was thinking when he wrote those profound 
 lines, the very essence of his creed : ' Beauty is truth, truth 
 beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to 
 know.' . . . The ode ' To Autumn ' and < The Eve of 
 St. Agnes' are beautiful to the very heart; they are not 
 clothed with beauty ; they are beauty itself. . . . His 
 soul was in contact with the soul of things, not with their 
 surface beauty." H. W. Mabie. 
 
 11 What shall I say of ' The Eve of St. Agnes? ' What, 
 indeed, can I say but that it is the most exquisite, the most 
 perfect poem in the world. It is all innocence, all purity, 
 all music, all picture, all delight, and all beauty." R. H. 
 Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Full on this casement shone the wintry moon, 
 
 And threw warm gules on Madeline's fair breast, 
 As down she knelt for heaven's grace and boon ; 
 
 Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, 
 
 And on her silver cross soft amethyst, 
 And on her hair a glory, like a saint : 
 
 She seemed a splendid angel, newly-drest, 
 Save wings, for Heaven." The Eve of St. Agnes. 
 
 " When old age shall this generation waste, 
 
 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe 
 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 
 * Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' that is all 
 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." 
 
 Ode to a Grecian Urn. 
 
 " A thing of beauty is a joy forever : 
 Its loveliness increases ; it will never 
 Piiss into nothingness ; but still will keep 
 A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 
 
KEATS 3O5 
 
 Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing. 
 
 Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing 
 
 A flowery band to bind us to the earth, 
 
 Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth 
 
 Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, 
 
 Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways 
 
 Made for our searching : yes, in spite of all, 
 
 Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
 
 From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, 
 
 Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon 
 
 For simple sheep; and such are daffodils 
 
 With the green world they live in." Endymion. 
 
 L Delicate Fancy Sympathetic Imagination. 
 its certainly had more of the penetrative and sympa- 
 thetic imagination which belongs to the poet, of that imagina- 
 tion which identifies itself with the momentary object of its 
 contemplation, than any man of these later days. It is not 
 merely that he has studied the Elizabethans and caught their 
 turn of thought, but that he really sees things with their sov- 
 ereign eye and feels them with their electrified senses. His 
 imagination was his bliss and bane." Lowell. 
 
 "Keats was born a poet of the most poetical kind. All 
 his feelings came to him through a poetical medium or were 
 speedily colored by it. He enjoyed a jest as heartily as any 
 one, and sympathized with the lowliest commonplace ; but 
 the next minute his thoughts were in a garden of enchant- 
 ment, with nymphs and fauns and shapes of exalted humanity. 
 It might be said of him that he never beheld an oak-tree 
 without seeing the Dryad." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 11 They [his poems] are flushed all over with the rich lights 
 of fancy and so colored and bestrewn with the flowers of 
 poetry that even while perplexed and bewildered in their 
 labyrinths, it is impossible to resist the intoxication of their 
 sweetness or to shut our hearts to the enchantments they 
 so lavishly present. . . . Without much incident or 
 
306 KEATS 
 
 many characters, and with little wit, wisdom, or arrange- 
 ment, a number of bright pictures are presented to the 
 imagination and a fine feeling expressed of those mysterious 
 relations by which visible external things are assimilated with 
 inward thoughts and emotions and become the images and 
 exponents of all passions and affections." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " Keats has come to his own, and it was not the surgeon's 
 shop ; it was the great world of the imagination, in the power 
 of realizing which to eyes less penetrating and to minds less 
 sensitive he was to be without a master so far as time and 
 growth were given him. . . . How deep was the loveli- 
 ness of that early putting forth of the young imagination ! It 
 was no delicate fancy, no light touch of skill, no precocious 
 brightness of spirit, which Keats gave the world : it was pure 
 imagination, that rarest and most precious because most cre- 
 ative of gifts. H. W. Mabie. 
 
 " Here we come to one of the most intrinsic properties 
 of Keats's poetry. He is a master of imagination in 
 verbal form : he gifts us with things so finely and magic- 
 ally said as to convey an imaginative impression." W. M. 
 Rossetti. 
 
 " With what skill he had learned to call up a picture in all 
 its distinctness of form and color imagination, is best seen in 
 the opening stanzas of 'St. Agnes' Eve,' and in the unri- 
 valled description of the painted window in the same poem." 
 W. J. Courthope. 
 
 11 In him an imagination, and fancy of much natural capac- 
 ity were lodged in a frame too weak to sustain the shocks of 
 life. ... In his later works the imagination of Keats 
 was somewhat released from the thraldom of sensation, and 
 evinced more independent power. The * Eve of St. Agnes ' 
 is delicately beautiful and perfect of its kind ; but it is not 
 poetry of the highest order. The sense of luxury is its pre- 
 dominant characteristic, and though full of exquisite fancies, 
 it has no grand imaginations." E. P. Whipple. 
 
KEATS 307 
 
 " What we independently know enables us to say that it 
 was pre-eminently as a poet that he was fitted to be dis- 
 tinguished. He was constitutionally a poet, one of those 
 minds in whom, to speak generally, imagination or ideality 
 is the sovereign faculty." David Masson. 
 
 " Fancy rather than form, sentiment rather than art, pre- 
 dominate." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The doors all looked as if they oped themselves, 
 The windows as if latched by fays and elves, 
 And from them comes a silver flash of light, 
 As from the westward of a summer's night ; 
 Or like a beauteous woman's large blue eyes 
 Gone mad through olden songs and poesies." 
 
 Re m in iscences. 
 
 " Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane, 
 In some untrodden region of my mind, 
 Where branched thoughts, new-grown with pleasant pain, 
 
 Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind : 
 Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees 
 Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep ; 
 And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds and bees, 
 The moss-lain Dryads shall be lulled to sleep." 
 
 Ode to Psyche. 
 
 11 Here are sweet peas, on tiptoe for a flight, 
 With wings of gentle flush o'er delicate white, 
 And taper fingers catching at all things, 
 To bind them all about with tiny rings." 
 
 I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill. 
 
 3. Exuberant Imagery. " Keats's early poetry, in- 
 deed, partook plentifully of the exuberance of youth. . . , 
 
308 KEATS 
 
 His region is a wilderness of sweets flowers of all hue and 
 weeds of glorious feature." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 11 The great distinction between him and these divine au- 
 thors [Jonson and Milton] is, that imagination in them is sub- 
 ordinate to reason and judgment, while, with him, it is para- 
 mount and supreme. . . . His ornaments are poured out 
 without measure or restraint and with no apparent design but 
 to unburden the breast of the author, and give vent to the 
 overflowing vein of his fancy. . . . The thin and scanty 
 tissue of his story is merely the light frame- work on which his 
 wreaths are suspended ; and while his imaginations go ram- 
 bling and entangling themselves everywhere, like wild honey- 
 suckles, all idea of sober reason and plan and consistency is ut- 
 terly forgotten, and we are strangled in their waste of fertility. 
 A great part of the work is written in the strongest and most 
 fantastical manner that can be imagined. It seems as if the 
 author had ventured everything that occurred to him in the 
 shape of a glittering image or striking expression taken the 
 first word that presented itself to make up a rhyme and then 
 made that word the germ of a new cluster of images a hint 
 for a new excursion of fancy and so wandered on, equally 
 forgetful whence he came and heedless whither he was going, 
 till he had covered his pages with an interminable arabesque 
 of connected and incongruous figures, that multiplied as 
 they extended, and were only harmonized by the brightness 
 of their tints and the graces of their forms." Francis 
 Jefrey. 
 
 " Happy the young poet who has the saving fault of exuber- 
 ance, if he have also the shaping faculty that sooner or later 
 will amend it." Lowell. 
 
 11 The spirit of art was always vividly near and precious to 
 Keats. He fashioned it exuberantly into a thousand shapes, 
 now of gem-like exquisiteness, now mere slight or showy trin- 
 kets ; and of these the scrupulous taste will even pronounce the 
 cheapest, and rightly pronounce them, to be trumpery. Still 
 
KEATS 309 
 
 there is the feeling of art, however provoking its masquerade." 
 W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " Since Spenser, Keats is the most poetical of poets, be- 
 cause he saw with the imagination ; and what he saw flashed 
 into images, figures, metaphors the fresh and glowing speech 
 of poetry. . . . [' Endymion '] has the freshness of feel- 
 ing and perception, the glow of imagination, the profusion 
 and riot of imagery . . . which one would expect 
 from so immature a mind. ... Its profusion of imagery 
 . . . is the fault of excessive romanticism." H. W. 
 Mabie. 
 
 " He kept aloof from opinion, doctrine, controversy, as 
 by a natural instinct ; he was most at home in the world 
 of sense and imagery, where it was his pleasure to weave 
 forth phantasies ; and if his intelligence did now and then 
 indulge in a discursive flight, it was by way of exercise, 
 or because opinions, doctrines, and controversies may be 
 considered as facts and therefore as materials to be worked 
 into poetic language . . . He manifests a bewildering 
 plentitude of luxuriant invention [in ( Endymion ']." David 
 Masson. 
 
 " The ' Ode to Psyche ' is a beautifully wrought specimen 
 of Keats's jeweler's workmanship, of his power of seizing on 
 an abstract thought and chasing it with fanciful imagery." 
 W. J. Courthope. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thou still unravished bride of quietness ! 
 
 Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time, 
 Sylvian historian, who canst thus express 
 
 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme : 
 What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape 
 Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady ? " 
 
 Ode to a Grecian Urn. 
 
3IO KEATS 
 
 " She dwells with Beauty Beauty that must die ; 
 
 And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips 
 Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, 
 
 Turning to poison while the bee- mouth sips : 
 Ay, in the very temple of Delight 
 
 Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, 
 Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue 
 
 Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine ; 
 His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, 
 And be among her cloudy trophies hung." 
 
 Ode on Melancholy. 
 
 tl O magic sleep ! O comfortable bird, 
 
 That broodest o'er the troubled sea of the mind 
 
 Till it is hushed and smooth ! O unconfined 
 
 Restraint ! imprisoned liberty ! great key 
 
 To golden palaces, strange minstrelsy, 
 
 Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, 
 
 Echoing grottoes, full of tumbling waves 
 
 And moonlight ; ay, to all the mazy world 
 
 Of silvery enchantment! who, upfurled 
 
 Beneath thy drowsy wing a triple hour, 
 
 But renovates and lives ? " Endymion. 
 
 4. Splendor Magnificence. " His fragment of 
 ' Hyperion ' seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as 
 sublime as ^Eschylus." Lord Byron. 
 
 " [' Hyperion '] presents the majesty, the austere beauty, 
 and the simplicity of Grecian temples enriched with Grecian 
 sculpture." De Quincey. 
 
 " ' Hyperion,' with its Titanic opening and Doric grandeur 
 of tone, inviolate from first to last." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " We see also incontestable proof of the greatness and purity 
 of his poetic gift in the constant return towards equilibrium 
 and repose in his later poems, and it is a repose always lofty 
 and clear-aired, like that of the eagle balanced in incommuni- 
 cable sunshine." Lowell. 
 
KEATS 311 
 
 " Witness the < Sonnet on Looking into Chapman's Homer ' 
 epical in the splendor and dignity of its images, and ter- 
 minating in the noblest Greek simplicity." Leigh Hunt. 
 " Another splendor on his mouth alit, 
 
 That mouth whence it was wont to draw the breath 
 Which gave it strength to pierce the guarded wit 
 
 And pass into the panting heart beneath 
 With lightning and with music." Shelley. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " His palace bright, 
 
 Bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold, 
 And touched with shade of bronzed obelisks 
 Glared a blood-red through all its thousand courts, 
 Arches, and domes, and fiery galleries ; 
 And all its curtains of Aurorian clouds 
 Flush'd angrily, while sometimes eagles' wings, 
 Unseen before by gods or wondering men, 
 Darken'd the place." Hyperion. 
 
 " O thou, whose mighty palace roof doth hang 
 From jagged trunks, and overshadoweth 
 Eternal whispers, glooms, the birth, life, death 
 Of unseen flowers in heavy peacefulness ; 
 Who lovest to see the hamadryads dress 
 Their ruffled locks where meeting hazels darken, 
 And through whole solemn hours dost sit, and harken." 
 
 Endymion. 
 
 " It keeps eternal whisperings around 
 
 Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell 
 
 Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell 
 
 Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. 
 
 Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, 
 
 That scarcely will the very smallest shell 
 
 Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, 
 
 When last the winds of heaven were unbound. 
 
312 KEATS 
 
 O ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, 
 
 Feast them upon the vvideness of the sea ; 
 
 O ye whose ears are dimmed with uproar rude, 
 
 Or fed too much with cloying melody, 
 
 Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth and brood, 
 
 Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired ! " 
 
 On the Sea. 
 
 5. Deep Pathos. Near the close of his short, sad life 
 Keats exclaims, " Oh, that something fortunate had ever hap- 
 pened to me or my brothers then might I hope but despair 
 is forced upon me as a habit." Not infrequently in his poems 
 we find traces of the dark cloud that overhung all his days. 
 
 " The very sadness of his lovely odes, To a Nightingale,' 
 'On a Grecian Urn,' 'To Autumn,' ' To Psyche,' is the 
 pleasant melancholy of the springtime of the heart." Henry 
 Van Dyke. 
 
 " I will only say of ' Isabella ' that no English poet of the 
 period of whom I have any knowledge, could have infused 
 into it such tenderness and pathos as Keats has. 
 There is an indescribable melancholy about this poem [' There 
 is a charm in footing slow '], which is one of the best he ever 
 wrote." R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 "O Pang-dowered Poet, whose reverberant lips 
 And heart-strung lyre awoke the moon's eclipse." 
 
 D. G. Rossetti. 
 
 " ' Isabella,' feeble and awkward in narrative to a degree 
 almost incredible in a student of Dryden and a pupil of Leigh 
 Hunt, is overcharged with episodical effects of splendid and 
 pathetic expression beyond the reach of either." A. C. 
 Swinburne. 
 
 " Melancholy is most of all the mark he set upon his poetry 
 a mark which has been copied by so many later versifiers 
 that it has seemed as if [it were] grief and pining." C. F. 
 Richardson. 
 
 "The last words of his Most wanderer from Arden ' are 
 
KEATS 
 
 313 
 
 terrible in their burden of agony ; they are as the wail of one 
 who calls across a waste of dead water, and hears only his own 
 cry return to him." Hall Caine. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, 
 And with thee fade away into the forest dim ; 
 Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget 
 What thou among the leaves hast never known, 
 The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
 Here, where men sit and hear each other groan ; 
 Where palsy shakes a few sad, last gray hairs, 
 Where youth grows pale and spectre-thin, and dies ; 
 Where but to think is to be full of sorrow, 
 And leaden-eyed despairs ; 
 Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, 
 Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow." 
 
 Ode to a Nightingale. 
 
 " When by my solitary hearth I sit, 
 
 And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom ; 
 When no fair. dreams before my ' mind's eye ' flit, 
 
 And the bare heath of life presents no bloom ; 
 Sweet Hope ! ethereal balm upon me shed, 
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head. 
 
 When e'er the fate of those I hold most dear 
 Tells to my fearful breast a tale of sorrow, 
 
 O bright-eyed Hope my morbid fancy cheer ; 
 Let me awhile thy brightest comforts borrow : 
 
 Thy heaven-born radiance around me shed, 
 
 And wave thy silver pinions o'er my head ! " 
 
 To Hope. 
 
 " Why did I laugh to-night ? No voice will tell ; 
 
 No God, no Demon of severe response, 
 
 Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell. 
 
 Then to my human heart I turn at once. 
 
314 KEATS 
 
 Heart ! Thou and I are here sad and alone ; 
 
 1 say, why did I laugh ? O mortal pain ! 
 O Darkness ! Darkness ! ever must I moan, 
 
 To question Heaven and Hell and Heart in vain. 
 Why did I laugh ? I know this Being's lease, 
 
 My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads ; 
 Yet would I on this very midnight cease, 
 
 And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds ; 
 Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, 
 But Death intenser Death is Life's high meed." 
 
 Sonnet. 
 
 \ Jb. Mythological Invention. " There is something 
 i/very curious, too, we think, in the way in which he has dealt 
 with the Pagan mythology, of which he has made so much 
 use in his poetry. Instead of presenting its imaginary persons 
 under the trite and vulgar traits that belong to them in the 
 ordinary systems, little more is borrowed from these than the 
 general conception of their condition and relations ; and an 
 original character and distinct individuality is then bestowed 
 upon them, which has all the merit of invention and all the 
 grace and attraction of the fictions on which it is engrafted. 
 The ancients, though they probably did not stand in any 
 great awe of their deities, have yet abstained very much from 
 any minute or dramatic representation of their feelings and 
 affections. . . . The author before us, however, and 
 some of his contemporaries, have dealt differently with the 
 subject ; and, sheltering the violence of the fiction under the 
 ancient traditionary fable, have in reality created and imagined 
 an entire new set of characters, and have brought closely and 
 minutely before us the loves and sorrows and perplexities of 
 beings with whose names and supernatural attributes we had 
 long been familiar, without any sense or feeling of their per- 
 sonal character. ' ' Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 "Selecting, as in 'Endymion,' a legend of the Grecian 
 mythology, or, as in 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil,' a story 
 
KEATS 3 I 5 
 
 of Boccaccio, or, as in ' The Eve of St. Agnes,' the hint of a 
 Middle Age superstition, or, as in ' Lamia,' a story of Greek 
 witchcraft, he sets himself to weave out the little text of sub- 
 stance so given into a linked succession of imaginary move- 
 ments and incidents taking place in the dim lights of ideal 
 scenery." David Masson. 
 
 11 No English poet since Shakespeare was ever so possessed 
 by the lovely mythology of Greece, which here discloses 
 itself in the freshness and fulness of forest life and feeling." 
 R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 "The manner in which Keats set about relating the Greek 
 story [' Endymion '], as he had thus conceived it, was as far 
 from being a Greek or ' classical ' manner as possible. . . 
 But though Keats sees the Greek world from afar, he sees it 
 truly. The Greek touch is not his, but in his own rich and 
 decorated English way he writes with a sure insight into the 
 vital meaning of Greek ideas. For the story of the war of 
 the Titans and Olympians [in Hyperion '] he had nothing 
 to guide him except scraps from the ancient writers, princi- 
 pally Hesiod, as retailed by the compilers of classical diction- 
 aries ; and from the scholar's point of view his version, we 
 can see, would at many points have been arbitrary, mixing 
 up Latin conceptions and nomenclature with Greek, and in- 
 troducing much new matter of his own invention. But as to 
 the essential meaning of that warfare and its results 
 it could not possibly be divined more truly, or illustrated with 
 more beauty and force, than by Keats in the speech of 
 Oceanus in the Second Book." Sidney Colvin. 
 
 " In ' Endymion ' the lines of the old Greek story are com- 
 pletely lost, and the subject becomes merely a vehicle for the 
 expression of the poet's own individual moods and caprices 
 of fancy." W. J. Court hope. 
 
3l6 KEATS 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Until at length old Saturn lifted up 
 
 His faded eyes, and saw his kingdom gone, 
 
 And all the gloom and sorrow of the place, 
 
 And that fair kneeling goddess ; and then spake 
 
 As with a palsied tongue, and while his beard 
 
 Shook horrid with such aspen malady : 
 
 1 O tender spouse of gold Hyperion, 
 
 Thea, I feel thee ere I see thy face ; 
 
 Look up, and let me see our doom in it ; 
 
 Look up, and tell me if this feeble shape 
 
 Is Saturn's ; tell me, if thou hear'st the voice 
 
 Of Saturn ; tell me, if this wrinkling brow, 
 
 Naked and bare of its great diadem, 
 
 Peers like the front of Saturn.' " Hyperion. 
 
 " Upon a time before the faery broods 
 Drove Nymph and Satyr from the prosperous woods, 
 Before King Oberon's bright diadem, 
 Sceptre, and mantle, clasped with dewy gem, 
 Frighted away the Dryads and the Fauns 
 From rushes green, and brakes, and cow-slip'd lawns, 
 The ever-smitten Hermes empty left 
 His golden throne, bent warm on amprous theft : 
 From high Olympus had he stolen light, 
 On this side of Jove's clouds, to escape the sight 
 Of his great summoner, and made retreat 
 Into a forest on the shores of Crete. 
 For somewhere in that sacred island dwelt 
 A nymph, to whom all hoofed satyrs knelt ; 
 At whose white feet the languid Titans poured 
 Pearls, while on land they withered and adored." 
 
 Lamia. 
 
 " What first inspired a bard of old to sing 
 Narcissus pining o'er the untainted spring ? 
 In some delicious ramble, he had found 
 A little space with boughs all woven round ; 
 
KEATS 317 
 
 And in the midst of all a clearer pool 
 
 Than e'er reflected in its pleasant cool 
 
 The blue sky ; here and there serenely peeping 
 
 Through tendril wreaths fantastically creeping ; 
 
 And on the bank a lonely flower he spied, 
 
 A meek and forlorn flower, with naught of pride, 
 
 Drooping its beauty o'er the watery clearness, 
 
 To woo its own sad image into nearness : 
 
 Deaf to light Zephyrus, it would not move ; 
 
 But still would seem to droop, to pine, to love. 
 
 So while the poet stood in this sweet spot, 
 
 Some fainter gleamings o'er his fancy shot ; 
 
 Nor was it long ere he had told the tale 
 
 Of young Narcissus and sad Echo's Vale." 
 
 / Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill. 
 
 7. Vagueness Mysticism. [In the " Ode to a Night- 
 ingale "] " You do not know what the house is, or where, nor 
 who the bird. Perhaps a king himself. But you see the 
 window open on the perilous sea, and hear the voice from out 
 the tree in which it is nested, sending its warble over the 
 foam. The whole is at once vague and particular, full of 
 mysterious life. You see nobody, though something is heard ; 
 and you know not what of beauty or wickedness is to come 
 over that sea." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 " The modes of existence in the two parties to the love- 
 fable of ' Endymion,' their relation to each other and to us, 
 their prospects finally, and the obstacles to the instant realiza- 
 tion of these prospects all these things are more vague and 
 incomprehensible than the reveries of an oyster. . . . 
 The very midsummer madness of affectation, of false vapory 
 sentiment, and of fantastic effeminacy, seemed to me com- 
 bined in Keats's 'Endymion' when I first saw it." De 
 Quincey. 
 
 " Besides the riot and extravagance of his fancy, the scope 
 and substance of Mr. Keats's poetry is rather too dreamy and 
 abstracted to excite the strongest interest or to sustain the at- 
 
3l8 KEATS 
 
 tention through a work of any great compass or extent. He 
 deals too much with shadowy and incomprehensible beings, 
 and is too constantly rapt into an extra-mundane Elysium, to 
 command a lasting interest with ordinary mortals." Francis 
 Jeffrey. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " As Hermes once took to his feathers light, 
 
 When lulled Argus, baffled, swooned and slept, 
 So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright, 
 
 So played, so charmed, so conquered, so bereft 
 The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes, 
 
 And seeing it asleep, so fled away, 
 Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies, 
 
 Nor unto Tempe, where Jove grieved a day, 
 But to that second circle of sad Hell, 
 
 Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw 
 Of rain and hailstones, lovers need not tell 
 
 Their sorrows pale were the sweet lips I saw, 
 Pale were the lips I kissed, the fair form 
 
 I floated with about that melancholy storm." 
 
 On a Dream. 
 
 " I met a lady in the meads, 
 Full beautiful a faery's child ; 
 Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
 And her eyes were wild. 
 
 I set her on my pacing steed, 
 And nothing else saw all day long, 
 For side-long would she bend, and sing 
 A faery song. 
 
 She took me to her elfin grot, 
 And there she wept, and sighed full sore, 
 And there I shut her wild, wild eyes 
 With kisses four, 
 
KEATS 319 
 
 And there she lulled me asleep 
 
 And there I dream'd Ah ! woe betide ! 
 
 The latest dream I ever dream'd 
 
 On the cold hill's side. 
 
 They cried ' La Belle Dame sans Merci 
 
 Hath thee in thrall ! ' 
 
 I saw their starved lips in the gloam, 
 
 With horrid warning gaped wide, 
 
 And I awoke and found me here, 
 
 On the cold hill's side." 
 
 La Belle Dame sans Merci. 
 
 " Strange ministrant of undescribed sounds, 
 That come a-swooning over hollow grounds, 
 And wither drearily on barren moors : 
 Dread opener of mysterious doors 
 Leading to universal knowledge see, 
 Great son of Dryope 
 
 The many that are come to pay their vows 
 With leaves about their brows ! " Endymion. 
 
 8. Sensitiveness Sensuousness. Of all our great 
 writers, Keats is the most sensitive. While this characteristic, 
 when carried to an extreme, has subjected him to much severe 
 criticism, it is also the secret of his rare power ; for, as Lowell 
 justly says, ' ' A man cannot have a sensuous nature and be 
 pachydermatous at the same time ; and if he be imaginative 
 as well as sensuous, he suffers just in proportion to the amount 
 of his imagination." This quality of Keats's style appears 
 especially in his letters and other writings composed shortly 
 before his untimely death. Speaking of the lady to whom he 
 was so passionately attached, he says, " Oh that I could be 
 buried near where she lives ! I am afraid to write to her, 
 to receive a letter from her to see her hand-writing would 
 break my heart." And a little later, after lying peacefully 
 awhile, he said to a friend, "1 can feel the flowers growing 
 over me." 
 
320 KEATS 
 
 " Every one of Keats's poems was a sacrifice of vitality; 
 . . . even yet, as we turn the leaves, they seem to warm 
 and thrill our fingers with the flush of his fine senses and the 
 flutter of his electrical nerves. . . . Three men, almost 
 contemporaneous with each other, Wordsworth, Keats, and 
 Byron, were the great means of bringing back English poetry 
 from the sandy deserts of rhetoric and recovering for her 
 her triple inheritance of simplicity, sensuousness, and passion. 
 
 . . Without losing its sensuousness, his poetry refined 
 itself and grew more inward, and the sensational was elevated 
 into the typical by the control of that fine sense which under- 
 lies the senses and is the spirit of them." Lowell. 
 
 " Keats has, above all, a sense of what is pleasurable and 
 open in the life of nature : for him she is the Alma Parens : 
 his expression is, therefore, more than Guerin's, something 
 genial, outward, and sensuous. No one can question the 
 eminency, in Keats's poetry, of the quality of sensuousness. 
 Keats as a poet is abundantly and enchantingly sensuous; 
 the question with some people will be whether he is anything 
 else. Many things may be brought forward to show him as 
 under the fascination and sole dominion of sense and desir- 
 ing nothing better. There is the exclamation in one of 
 his letters : ' Oh for a life of sensations rather than of 
 thoughts ! ' . . . [In his love letters] we have the tone, 
 or rather the entire want of tone, the abandonment of all 
 reticence and all dignity, of the mere sensuous man, of the 
 man who is passion's slave. . . . This sensuous strain 
 Keats had, and a man of his poetic power could not, what- 
 ever his strain, but show his talent in it. But he has some- 
 thing more and something better. We who believe Keats to 
 have been, by his promise, at any rate, if not fully by his 
 performance, one of the very greatest of English poets, and 
 who believe also that a merely sensuous man cannot either by 
 promise or performance be a very great poet, because poetry 
 interprets life, and so large and noble a part of life is outside 
 
KEATS 321 
 
 such a man's ken we cannot but look for signs in him of 
 something more than sensuousness, for signs of character and 
 virtue. There is Haydon's story of him, how he once 
 covered his tongue and throat as far as he could reach with 
 Cayenne pepper, in order to appreciate the delicious coldness 
 of claret in all its glory his own expression." Matthew 
 Arnold. 
 
 " In him an imagination and fancy of much natural capac- 
 ity were lodged in a frame too weak to sustain the shocks of 
 life and too sensitive for the development of high and sturdy 
 thought. . . . His nature was essentially sensitive. Far 
 from being independent of others, he held his life at the 
 mercy of others. 
 
 " In his early poems Keats appears as a kind of youthful 
 Spenser, without Spenser's moral sense or judgment. His 
 soul floats in a ' sea of rich and ripe sensations.' The odors, 
 forms, sounds, and colors of nature take him captive. There 
 is little reaction of his mind on his sensations. He grows 
 faint and languid with the excess of light and loveliness which 
 stream into his soul. ... All that is mighty in nature 
 and man is too apt to be sicklied o'er with fanciful sentimen- 
 talities. The gods are transformed into green girls, and the 
 sublime and beautiful turned to favor and prettiness. Every- 
 thing is luscious, sweet, dainty, and debilitating, in his sense 
 of love and beauty. There is no descent into his soul of that 
 spirit of Beauty, that < awful loveliness,' before whose presence 
 the poet's sensations are stilled, and in whose celebration his 
 language is adoration. In the place of this there is an all- 
 absorbing relish and delicate perception of beauties a kind 
 of feeding on ' nectared sweets' a glow of delight in the 
 abandonment of the soul to soft and delicious images, framed 
 by fancy out of rich sensations. It is rather reverie than 
 inspiration. . . . This bewildering sense of physical 
 pleasure was generally predominant in Keats. . . . A 
 keen sensitiveness of perception doubtless characterizes all 
 
 21 
 
322 KEATS 
 
 great poets. Keats is supposed to have had more of this 
 power, because he lacked other and equally important powers 
 or because it obtained over them such a mastery. . . . 
 The confounding of fine sensations with moral sense, the 
 pleasurable with the right, is a great defect of Keats's poetry. 
 
 "The most obvious characteristic of Keats's poetry is 
 certainly its abundant sensuousness. Some of his finest little 
 poems are all but literally lyrics of the sensuous, embodi- 
 ments of the feelings of ennui, fatigue, physical languor, and 
 the like, in tissues of fancied circumstances and sensation. 
 In following him in these luxurious excursions into a 
 world of ideal nature and life, we see his imagination wing- 
 ing about, as if it were his disembodied senses hovering insect- 
 like in one humming group, all keeping together in harmony 
 at the bidding of a higher intellectual power and yet each cater- 
 ing for itself in that species of circumstance which is its 
 peculiar food. ... I believe that one of the most re- 
 markable characteristics of Keats is the universality of his 
 sensuousness." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " At the foundation of the character of Keats lay an extra- 
 ordinary keenness of all the bodily sensibilities and the mental 
 sensibilities which depend upon them. He led, in great 
 part, a life of passive sensation, of pleasure and pain through 
 the senses. ... He possessed, in short, simply in virtue 
 of his organization, a rich intellectual foundation of that kind 
 which consists of notions furnished directly by sensations and 
 of a corresponding stock of names and terms. Even had he 
 remained without education, his natural vocabulary of words 
 for all the varieties of thrills, tastes, odors, sounds, colors, 
 and tactual perceptions, would have been unusually precise 
 and extensive. As it was, this native capacity for keen and 
 abundant sensation was developed, educated, and har- 
 monized by the influences of reading, intellectual conversa- 
 tion, and more or less laborious thought, into that richer and 
 more cultivated sensuousness, which, under the name of sensi- 
 
KEATS 323 
 
 bility to natural beauty, is an accepted requisite in the con- 
 stitution of painters and poets." David Masson. 
 
 "Sensuous Keats was, as every poet whose inspiration is 
 direct from heaven should be. . . . Quick susceptibility 
 to sensuous impressions of every kind may be plentifully 
 illustrated by opening almost at random in his works. . . . 
 The extraordinary beauty and facility of his descriptions of 
 sensation and his addiction to climax and point in his prose 
 have made it easy to quote phrases which seem to show that 
 he was unduly attached to delights of mere sense." G. E. 
 Woodberry. 
 
 " Somewhat too sensually sensitive he may have been, but 
 the nature of the man was, as far as was the quality of the poet, 
 above the pitiful level of a creature whose soul could let itself 
 be snuffed out by an article." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " 'The Eve of St. Agnes,' pure and passionate, surprising 
 by its fine excess of color and melody, sensuous in every line, 
 yet free from the slightest taint of sensuality, is unforgettable 
 and unsurpassable as the dream of first love." Henry Van 
 Dyke. 
 
 "Viewing all these, . . . the predominant quality 
 which we trace in them [his poems] is an extreme suscepti- 
 bility to delight. . . . The emotion throughout is the 
 emotion of beauty : beauty intensely perceived, intensely 
 loved. . . . He was a man of perception rather than of 
 contemplation or speculation. . . . He saw so far and 
 so keenly into the sensuous as to be penetrated with the 
 sentiment which, to a healthy and large nature, is its insepa- 
 rable outcome. ... If the sensuous was his atmosphere, 
 the breathing apparatus with which he respired it was senti- 
 ment. The susceptibility is visible in his poems to all forms 
 of beauty and delight." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 "Keats was sensuous, . . . but the richness of his 
 diction carries with it the impression of immense intellect- 
 ual resource. . . . He was no idle singer of sensuous 
 
324 KEATS 
 
 moods, he was a resolute and clear -sigh ted pursuer of the 
 Ideal. ... In that sensuousness lay the promise of a 
 prime which, had it come, might have recalled the noontide 
 of Spenser and Shakespeare." H. W. Mabie. 
 
 " His sensibility, sharpened by mortal illness, tended to 
 a morbid excess. . . . Extreme sensibility struggled in 
 him with a great understanding." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 O known Unknown, from whom my being sips 
 
 Such darling essence, wherefore may I not 
 
 Be ever in these arms ? in this sweet spot 
 
 Pillow my chin forever ? ever press 
 
 These toying hands and kiss their smooth excess ? 
 
 Why not forever and forever feel 
 
 That breath about my eyes ? " Endymion. 
 
 " Give me a golden pen, and let me lean 
 
 On heap'd up flowers, in regions clear and far ; 
 Bring me a tablet whiter than a star, 
 Or hand of hymning angel, when 'tis seen 
 The silver strings of heavenly harp atween : 
 And let there glide, by many a pearly car, 
 Pink robes, and wavy hair, and diamond jar, 
 And half-discovered wings, and glances keen. 
 The while let music wander round my ears ; 
 And as it reaches each delicious ending, 
 Let me write down a line of glorious tone, 
 And full of many wonders of the spheres : 
 For what a height my spirit is contending ! 
 'Tis not content so soon to be alone." Sonnet. 
 
 " Flush every thing that hath a vermeil hue ; 
 Let the rose grow intense and warm the air, 
 And let the clouds of even and of morn 
 Float in voluptuous fleeces o'er the hills ; 
 
KEATS 325 
 
 Let the red wine within the goblet boil, 
 Cold as a bubbling well ; let faint-lipped shells, 
 On sands or in great deeps, vermillion turn 
 Through all the labyrinths." Endymion. 
 
 9. Melody Felicity of Expression. "Keats had 
 an instinct for fine words, which are in themselves pictures 
 and ideas, and had more of the power of poetic expression 
 than any [other] modern English poet. . . . Thought 
 emancipated itself from expression without becoming its ty- 
 rant ; and music and meaning floated together, accordant as 
 swan and shadow, on the smooth element of his verse." 
 Lowell. 
 
 " No one else in poetry, save Shakespeare, has in expression 
 quite the fascinating felicity of Keats, his perfection of loveli- 
 ness." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " His work [' Endymion '] lives not by reason of its per- 
 fect structure, but by reason of its overflowing beauty of po- 
 etic thought and diction. . . . It is enough that, except 
 Shakespeare, no English poet has found such color in our 
 speech, has made it linger in the ear in phrase so rich and 
 full." H. W. Mabie. 
 
 " The faultless force and the profound subtlety of his deep 
 and cunning instinct' for absolute natural beauty can hardly 
 be questioned or overlooked ; and this is doubtless the one 
 main distinctive gift or power which denotes him as a poet 
 among all his equals, and gives right to rank forever beside 
 Coleridge and Shelley." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 "A casual survey will discover felicitous touches of de- 
 scription, enough to indicate to any candid mind how full 
 of poetry was the soul of Keats. He speaks of the ' patient 
 brilliance of the moon ' and ' the quaint mossiness of aged 
 roots.' Whoso feels not the force of such words will look in 
 vain for the poetic either in life or literature." H. T. Tuck- 
 erman. 
 
326 KEATS 
 
 " He brooded over fine phrases like a lover, and often 
 when he met a quaint or delicious word he would take pains 
 to make it his own by using it as speedily as possible in 
 some poem he was writing." David Masson. 
 
 11 Perhaps there is no poet, living or dead, except Shake- 
 speare, who can pretend to anything like the felicity of epithet 
 which characterizes Keats. One word or phrase is the es- 
 sence of a whole description or sentiment. It is like the dull 
 substance of the earth struck through by electric fires and 
 converted into veins of gold and diamonds." William Hew- 
 itt. 
 
 " Keats came gradually to perceive the analogy between 
 painting and poetry latent in the picturesque associations of 
 individual words.' ' IV. J. Courthope. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Shed no tears ! Oh shed no tears ! 
 The flower will bloom another year. 
 Weep no more ! Oh weep no more ! 
 Young buds sleep in the root's white core. 
 Dry your eyes ! Oh dry your eyes ! 
 For I was taught in Paradise 
 To ease my breast of melodies. 
 
 Shed no tears ! "Faery Song. 
 
 " To Sorrow 
 
 I bade good morrow, 
 And thought to leave her far away behind ; 
 
 But cheerly, cheerly, 
 
 She loves me dearly ; 
 She is so constant to me, and so kind : 
 
 I would deceive her, 
 
 And so leave her, 
 But ah ! she is so constant and so kind." 
 
 Endymion. 
 
KEATS 
 
 " 'Tis the witching hour of night, 
 Orbed is the moon and bright, 
 And the stars they glisten, glisten, 
 Seeming with bright eyes to listen 
 
 For what listen they ? 
 For a song and for a charm, 
 See they glisten in alarm, 
 And the moon is waxing warm 
 
 To hear what I shall say. 
 Moon ! keep wide thy golden ears- 
 Hearken stars ! and hearken, spheres ! 
 Hearken, thou eternal sky ! 
 I sing an infant's lullaby, 
 
 A pretty lullaby. 
 Listen, listen, listen, listen, 
 Glisten, glisten, glisten, glisten, 
 
 And hear my lullaby ! " A Prophecy. 
 
 327 
 
SHELLEY, 1792-1822 
 
 Biographical Outline. Percy Bysshe Shelley, born at 
 Field Place, Warnham, near Horsham, August 4, 1792 ; father 
 a man of means and gentle birth, afterward a baronet ; Shel- 
 ley is first instructed by a clergyman tutor, and at the age of 
 ten is placed in Sion House Academy, near Brentford ; being 
 a sensitive child, the persecutions endured from his school- 
 fellows inspire him with that hatred of oppression and that 
 spirit of resistance which marked all his after-life, while the 
 smattering of scientific knowledge that he obtains at Brent- 
 ford awakens in him a passionate thirst to know the secrets of 
 nature ; at twelve he enters Eton, where he repeats the ex- 
 periences of persecution at Brentford, only in an aggravated 
 form, and where he again seeks relief from the torture of his 
 fellows in scientific research ; he is known at Eton as " Shel- 
 ley, the Atheist," and is accused of " cursing his father and 
 the King;" while at Eton he makes good progress in the 
 classics, and imbibes from a reading of the first two books of 
 Pliny's " Natural History " that pantheism which marked his 
 religious theories ever afterward ; in his sixteenth year he 
 writes and publishes his romance " Zastrozzi," being an imi- 
 tation of the style of Mrs. Radcliffe ; in 1810 he publishes 
 another romance, entitled " St. Irvyne, or the Rosicrucian," 
 and soon afterward collaborates with his cousin, Thomas 
 Medwin, in writing a poem, which they call " The Wan- 
 dering Jew ; " this poem was eventually published in Fraser' 's 
 Magazine; in 1810 Shelley publishes also a volume entitled 
 " Poems by Victor and Cazire," a part of which was written 
 either by his sister Elizabeth or by his cousin, Harriet 
 Grove, to whom he thought himself attached ; Shelley soon 
 
 328 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 withdrew this volume, on learning that his coadjutor had 
 cribbed wholesale from Matthew Gregory Lewis. 
 
 He enters University College, Oxford, April loth, and soon 
 afterward forms a friendship with Thomas Jefferson Hogg, a 
 youth of sarcastic humor, who had great influence over 
 Shelley all the rest of his life, and who encouraged him in his 
 natural aggressiveness against established authority ; in 1810 
 Shelley and Hogg circulate a pamphlet of burlesque verses, 
 purporting to have been written by Margaret Nicholson, an 
 insane woman who had tried to kill the King ; soon afterward 
 Shelley submits to the bishops and heads of colleges a syllabus 
 of the arguments supposed to demonstrate "the necessity of 
 atheism;" on March 25, 1811, he is summoned before the 
 college authorities, and, on his refusal to answer their ques- 
 tions, is handed a sentence of expulsion, which had been pre- 
 viously signed and sealed ; Hogg protests against the injustice 
 to his friend, and is himself expelled in consequence. 
 
 Being excluded, also, from his own home, Shelley takes 
 lodgings in London at 15 Poland Street, and frequents the 
 hospitals with the idea of eventually becoming a physician ; 
 while in London he renews a slight acquaintance already 
 formed with Harriet Westbrook, the fifteen-year-old daughter 
 of a retired hotel-keeper, and also a school-friend of Shelley's 
 sister ; Miss Westbrook fancies herself persecuted at home, and 
 Shelley sympathizes and tries to interfere in her behalf; before 
 his expulsion from Oxford he had been refused by his cousin, 
 Harriet Grove, and when he is recalled to London from his 
 summer vacation of 1811 by letters from Harriet Westbrook, 
 imploring his assistance, influenced by compassion and pique, 
 he elopes with her to Edinburgh, where they are married 
 August 28, 1811 ; during the winter of 1811-12 Shelley 
 resides at Keswick, where Southey receives him kindly, and 
 here he opens his correspondence with Godwin, whose work 
 on "Political Justice" had influenced the poet profoundly; 
 inspired by Godwin's principles, Shelley leaves Keswick in 
 
330 SHELLEY 
 
 February, 1812, on a quixotic expedition to redress the 
 wrongs of Ireland ; he makes several public addresses in Ire- 
 land, publishes "An Address to the Irish People," and in 
 April departs for Wales, leaving Irish matters much as he 
 found them ; about this time he becomes a vegetarian, and 
 he generally follows this kind of diet so long as he is in Eng- 
 land ; he spends the early summer of 1812 at Cwm Elan, and 
 later settles at Lynmouth in North Devon, where he publishes 
 a powerful remonstrance against the condemnation of one 
 Eaton for publishing the third part of Thomas Paine's " Age 
 of Reason." 
 
 During 1812 Shelley excites the attention of the Govern- 
 ment by sending to sea in boxes and bottles a " Declaration 
 of Rights " and a poem entitled " The Devil's Walk ; " until 
 after the excitement thus caused had passed, he secludes him- 
 self at Tanyrallt, near Tremadoc, in North Wales ; while 
 there he becomes so interested in an important public engi- 
 neering work (a sea-wall) that he goes to London to raise 
 money for the prosecution of the work ; while in London he 
 meets Godwin ; he leaves Tanyrallt in February, 1813, and 
 settles in Ireland, near Killarney, till the following June, 
 when he goes with his wife to London, where their first child, 
 lanthe, is born June 28, 1813 ; in July Shelley takes a house 
 in Bracknell, in Berkshire, near Windsor Forest ; about this 
 time his " Queen Mab," apparently written in 1812, is pub- 
 lished with an appendix of irrelevant matter consisting of 
 notes on " natural diet ;" the poem remained unknown till 
 1821, when a pirated reproduction, which Shelley tried in 
 vain to suppress, won the fame so long denied to the origi- 
 nal; early in 1814 he publishes an ironical " Refutation 
 of Deism;" during 1814 begins his estrangement from his 
 wife, which was due primarily to "a radical incompatibility 
 of temperament." although as late as March 23, 1814, he 
 secures her legal status by strengthening the original Scotch 
 marriage ceremony with a re-marriage under the rites of the 
 
SHELLEY 331 
 
 Church of England; while he is gradually becoming estranged 
 and is being attracted by Mary Godwin, Mrs. Shelley leaves 
 her home for her father's house at Bath. 
 
 On July 28, 1814, Shelley leaves England with Mary God- 
 win, taking with them Jane .Clairmont, daughter of Mary 
 Godwin's step-mother and afterward notorious as one of 
 Byron's mistresses ; the party travel through France to 
 Switzerland, where Shelley writes to Harriet, proposing that 
 she join them ; he is soon obliged to return to England, how- 
 ever, by the failure to receive expected remittances; the de- 
 tails of this escapade were afterward recorded by Shelley in a 
 short monologue entitled "The History of a Six Weeks' 
 Tour;" later in 1814 Shelley's wife gives birth to a son, 
 and his financial supplies are cut off by the mutual hostilities 
 of the Shelleys, the Westbrooks, and the Godwins; on the 
 death of Shelley's grandfather, early in 1815, the poet's 
 father settles on him an annuity of ^1,000 a year, and he, 
 in turn, gives to Harriet ^200 a year ; after a tour of south- 
 ern England, he settles for a time in a house at Bishopsgate, 
 near Windsor Forest, where he recovers from a threatened 
 attack of tuberculosis, and where the solitude inspires his first 
 really worthy poem, " Alastor, the Spirit of Solitude," pub- 
 lished in 1816 with several of Shelley's minor poems ; dur- 
 the winter of 1815-16 he adds much to his mental culture by 
 the study of Greek literature with his friend Hogg and 
 Thomas Love Peacock, whom Shelley had met through his 
 publisher, Hookham ; in January, 1816, a son is born to 
 Shelley and Mary Godwin ; he now gives up his feverish de- 
 sire for political agitation, develops more tranquillity of soul, 
 and becomes content to influence society through his writings; 
 about this time he probably wrote his beautiful prose " Essay 
 on Christianity," not published till 1859 after his death a 
 production that exhibits a great change in the poet's views 
 and religious attitude since the wild days of " Queen Mab." 
 
 In May, 1816, he makes a hasty flight into Switzerland, in 
 
332 SHELLEY 
 
 company with his wife and Jane, or Claire, Clairmont, doubt- 
 less to escape the importunities of Godwin for further loans in 
 addition to large sums that Shelley had already given him; 
 in Switzerland they meet Byron, who now calls Shelley " the 
 most gentle, the most amiable, and the least worldly-minded 
 person I have ever met ; " while they are in Switzerland with 
 Byron Shelley visits Mont Blanc, and Mary Godwin partly 
 composes her novel " Frankenstein ; " returning to England in 
 the autumn of 1816, Shelley settles temporarily at Bath ; here 
 they are deeply affected by the death of Mary Wollstonecraft, 
 Mary Godwin's half-sister, and by the suicidal drowning of 
 Harriet Shelley, on December 10, 1816, in the Serpentine, 
 Hyde Park, London ; Shelley's marriage with Mary Godwin 
 is legally sanctioned December 30, 1816, and he attempts 
 to gain possession of his two children by Harriet through an 
 appeal to the Court of Chancery, but a decision given by Lord 
 Eldon, March 27, 1817, denies his appeal ; early in 1817 he 
 publishes, anonymously, his " Proposal for Putting Reform to 
 the Vote Throughout the Kingdom" and later in the same 
 year his " Address to the People on the Death of the Princess 
 Charlotte; " in September, 1817, a daughter is born to Shel- 
 ley and Mary Godwin, and his family is further increased by 
 the coming of Claire Clairmont and her child by Byron; 
 among his neighbors at Bath is Leigh Hunt, who had been 
 most kind to Shelley during the miseries of the previous win- 
 ter, and whom Shelley repaid later with a gift of ; 1,400, 
 much more than was consistent with the claims of nearer kin- 
 dred upon Shelley; through Hunt he meets Keats, though 
 their acquaintance never became intimate ; a renewal of im- 
 portunities by Godwin for further financial aid now completely 
 estranges him from Shelley ; during 1817 the poet writes, in six 
 months, " The Revolt of Islam," which is published in Lon- 
 don in 1818 ; this poem was written partly on a seat in Bisham 
 wood and partly in a boat among the islets of the Thames; 
 it is bitterly attacked in the Quarterly Review, and is highly 
 
SHELLEY 333 
 
 praised by Professor Wilson (" Christopher North"), writing 
 under the influence of De Quincey, but is otherwise unnoticed ; 
 during 1817 Shelley also gives much time to relieving the dis- 
 tress of his cottager neighbors at Bath, and writes more polit- 
 ical tracts, using the pseudonym "The Hermit of Marlow." 
 
 He again leaves England March n, 1818, reaches Turin 
 March 2ist, and remains in Italy thereafter till his death; he 
 spends the spring of 1818 at Genoa and Milan and the sum- 
 mer at the baths of Lucca, where he translates Plato's " Sym- 
 posium " and completes " Rosalind and Helen;" he goes 
 thence to Venice, to deliver to Byron his daughter by Claire 
 Clairmont ; at Venice Shelley's own daughter Clara dies, 
 and he resides for a time at Este in a villa lent him by Byron; 
 here he begins " Prometheus Unbound," and writes " Lines 
 on the Euganean Hills," which was published in the follow- 
 ing year, with a few other poems ; he also writes "Julian and 
 Maddalo " about this time; in November, 1818, he starts 
 for Rome, and while on the journey begins his series of in- 
 comparable letters to Peacock letters that place him, in the 
 opinion of Leslie Stephen, "at the head of English letter- 
 writers. ' ' 
 
 Shelley spends the month of December, 1818, at Naples, 
 where he writes " Lines Written in Dejection; " returning 
 to Rome, he remains till June, 1819, when the death of his 
 son William causes him to remove to Leghorn and thence to 
 Florence ; here his third son, afterward Sir Percy Bysshe 
 Shelley, was born ; in November, 1819, after finishing " Pro- 
 metheus Unbound," Shelley begins "The Cenci," based on 
 the tragedy of Beatrice Cenci, whose face had fascinated him 
 in the reputed portrait by Guido in the Colonna palace at 
 Rome; both " Prometheus Unbound " and " The Cenci " are 
 published in 1819-20 ; while at Florence, in October, 1819, 
 Shelley writes the "Ode to the West Wind" (his noblest 
 lyric), his parody, " Peter Bell the Third," and "The Masque 
 of Anarchy ' ' (provoked by the Manchester massacre of Au- 
 
334 SHELLEY 
 
 .gust, 1819; Peter Bell the Third " was not published till 
 1839; late in 1819 the poet removes to Pisa, which is his 
 home, mainly, during the rest of his life ; at Pisa, in July, 
 1820, he writes his " Epistle to Maria Gisborne" (growing 
 out of a premature project of Shelley and his friend Gisborne 
 for a steamboat line between Genoa and Leghorn) ; during 
 1820 he writes " The Witch of Atlas" and his anonymous 
 burlesque tragedy, " Swellfoot the Tyrant," based on Queen 
 Caroline's trial and withdrawn from publication because the 
 Society for the Prevention of Vice threatened to prosecute 
 the author ; during the same year he writes also " The Sensi- 
 tive Plant " and " The Skylark," and completes " Epipsychi- 
 dion ; " " Epipsychidion " was partly based on the story of 
 an Italian lady, Emilia Viviani, who had been imprisoned in 
 a convent to compel her to an obnoxious marriage, and whom 
 Shelley met when the "Epipsychidion" had been begun 
 but thrown aside ; the poem was published in London in 
 1821; while writing "Epipsychidion" Shelley writes also 
 his masterly "Defence of Poetry," being an answer to an 
 argument by Peacock ; two additional parts of the " Defence 
 of Poetry " were planned but never written, and the first part 
 was not published till Shelley's prose writings appeared, in 
 1840, after his death. 
 
 In 1821, on the death of Keats, Shelley writes and publishes 
 at Pisa his " Adonais ; " during this year he visits Byron at 
 Ravenna and makes arrangements for him to remove to Pisa ; 
 in the autumn of 1821 the news of the Greek insurrection 
 inspires Shelley's " Hellas," which is published in London 
 in 1822; during 1822 he begins his tragedy on Charles I., 
 and makes translations from "Faust" and from Calderon's 
 " Magico Prodigioso; " in April, 1822, the Shelleys remove 
 to Lerici, near Spezzia, and soon afterward he writes there his 
 " Triumph of Life ; " on the arrival at Pisa of Leigh Hunt 
 and his apparently dying wife, in May, 1822, Shelley hastens 
 thither and aids Byron in making them as comfortable as pos- 
 
SHELLEY 335 
 
 sible ; he sets sail from Leghorn for Spezzia, July 8, 1822, in 
 company with his friend and neighbor, Edward E. Williams, 
 but the vessel is caught in a squall and all on board are 
 drowned ; on the i8th of July Shelley's body, recognized by 
 the volumes of Sophocles and Keats in the coat-pockets, was 
 washed ashore near Viareggio ; it was at first buried in the 
 sand, but on the i6th of August following, in the presence 
 of Byron, Leigh Hunt, and Trelawney, it was cremated, 
 and the ashes were interred in the Protestant cemetery at 
 Rome, December 17, 1822 ; his heart, which would not 
 burn, was snatched from the flames by Trelawney, was given 
 to Mrs. Shelley, and is still in the possession of the family ; 
 in 1823 was published a volume entitled " Poetical Pieces " 
 containing ''Prometheus Unbound," " Hellas," "The Cen- 
 ci," "Rosalind and Helen," and other poems; in 1824 
 "Julian and Maddalo " and " The Witch of Atlas," hitherto 
 unpublished, appeared in a volume together with the unpub- 
 lished "Triumph of Life," the "Epistle to Maria Gisborne," 
 and many minor lyrics and translations, the whole entitled 
 "Posthumous Poems;" the cost of this publication was 
 borne by the poets B. W. Procter and T. L. Beddoes and 
 by Beddoe's future biographer, T. Kelsall ; this volume was 
 almost immediately withdrawn by an agreement with the 
 poet's father, Sir Timothy Shelley, and for several years 
 Shelley's poems appeared only in pirated editions, as the 
 courts had refused to protect " Queen Mab " with copyright; 
 in 1839 Mrs. Shelley published an authentic edition of her 
 husband's poems in four volumes, including some lyrics till 
 then in manuscript. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON SHELLEY. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Mac- 
 
 millan, 205-253. 
 Shairp, J. C, "Aspects of Poetry." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 194-218. 
 
336 SHELLEY 
 
 Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 41-111. 
 Lowell, J. R., "Prose Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 4:352-413. 
 Godwin, Parke, "Out of the Past." New York, 1870, Putnam, m- 
 
 144. 
 Dowden, E., " Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 
 
 Co., 789-877. 
 De Quincey, Thomas, "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, A. & C. Black, 
 
 n:354-377. 
 Stephen, Leslie, " Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 
 
 3 : 64-100. 
 Hutton, R. H., "Literary Essays." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 
 
 133-187. 
 Kingsley, Charles, " Miscellanies." London, 1860, J. W. Burke, 
 
 I : 304-324- 
 De Vere, Aubrey, "Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." New York, 1887, 
 
 Macmillan, 2: 124-133. 
 Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." New York, 1878, Ward, 
 
 Lock & Bowden, 309-328. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, v. index. 
 Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Holt, 3 : 90-94. 
 Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 
 
 London, 1885, Murray, 111-156. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 
 
 Fields, 308-318. 
 
 Masson, D., "Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats," etc. London, 1874, Mac- 
 millan, 107-142. 
 Browning, Robert, "Essay on Shelley." Boston, 1895, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin & Co. (Works), 1008-1014. 
 Bagehot, Walter, "Works." Hartford, 1888, Traveler's Insurance Co., 
 
 I : 81-134. 
 Mitford, M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1851, 
 
 Harper, 315-319- 
 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets," (Myers). New York, 1881, Mac- 
 millan, 4 : 348-356. 
 
 Symonds, J. A., "Shelley." New York, 1879, Harper, v. index. 
 Rossetti, W. M., "A Memoir of P. B. Shelley." London, 1886, John 
 
 Stark, v. index. 
 Dowden, E., "Life of P. B. Shelley." London, 1887, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 2 vols., v. index. 
 
SHELLEY 337 
 
 liphant, Mrs., " The Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 
 Macmillan, 3 : 37~53 and 79-103. 
 
 Lang, Andrew, " Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Long- 
 mans, Green, & Co , 145-154. 
 
 Lanier, Sidney, "The English Novel." New York, 1892, Scribner, 
 94-106. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, " First Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 
 1851, James Hogg, 49-71. 
 
 Home, R. H., " A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 
 3I7-32L 
 
 Craik, G. L., " A History of English Literature." New York, 1866, 
 Scribner, 2 : 521-527. 
 
 Tuckerman, H. T., " Thoughts on the Poets." London, 1852, 101- 
 
 II5- 
 Hunt, Leigh, "Selections from the English Poets." Philadelphia, 
 
 1854, W. P. Hazzard, 215-229. 
 Devey, J. f "A Comparative Estimate," etc. London, 1873, E. Moxon, 
 
 239-262. 
 Jeaffreson, J. C., "The Real Shelley." London, 1885, Hurst & 
 
 Blackett, 2 vols., v. index. 
 Howitt, Wm., "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." New York, 
 
 1847, Harper, 489-523- 
 Caine, T. H., "Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Elliot Stock, 
 
 191-231. 
 Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 
 
 Scribner, 1 : 81-140. 
 Dennis, J., " Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, Young & Co., 
 
 373-389- 
 Fuller (Ossoli), Margaret, "Life Without and Life Within." Boston, 
 
 1874, Roberts, 149-152. 
 Hillard, G. S., "Six Months in Italy." Boston, 1873, Osgood, 541- 
 
 545- 
 
 Hutton, R. H., " Essays, Theological and Literary." London, 1877, 
 
 Daldy, 2 : 118-152. 
 Macdonald, G., "Orts." London, 1882, Longmans, Green & Co., 264- 
 
 281. 
 Symonds, J. A., "English Men of Letters" (Shelley). New York, 
 
 1879, Harper, 183-189. 
 Hazlitt, W., "Johnson's 'Lives' Completed." London, 1854, Gibbings, 
 
 4:281-285. 
 Smith, G. B., "Shelley, a Critical Biography." Edinburgh, 1877, 
 
 Douglass, v. index 
 
 22 
 
338 SHELLEY 
 
 Chorley, H. S., " The Authors of England." London, 1838, Tilt, 56- 
 
 64. 
 
 Poe, E. A., "Works." Edinburgh, 1874, Black, 4:86-87. 
 Swinburne, A. C., " Essays and Studies." London, 1875, Chatto & 
 
 Wiqdus, 184-237. 
 
 Nineteenth Century, 23 : 23-40 (M. Arnold). 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 56: 174-181 (H. D. Traill). 
 Taifs Magazine, 12 : 760-761 (De Quincey) ; 13 : 23-29 (De Quincey). 
 Fraser's Magazine, 20: 38-53 (J. C. Shairp). 
 Century, 22 : 622-629 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 Contemporary Review, 46 : 383-396 (E. Dowden). 
 Academy, 30 : 371-374 (T. H. Caine) ; 395-396 (E. Dowden) ; 412 (T. 
 
 H. Caine); 22:426 (W. Minto) ; 213-214 (T. H. Caine). 
 Athenaum, 1882, 2 : 78 (W. M. Rossetti) ; 144 (W. M. Rossetti) ; 176 
 
 (W. M. Rossetti) ; 1887, i : 641 (E. Dowden). 
 Nation, 44: 146-147 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 Academy, 31 : 220-237 (E- Dowden). 
 Fortnightly Review, 48: 461-481 (E. Dowden). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Mysticism Subtlety Idealism. " His descrip- 
 tions are often strangely unreal. They seem to be enveloped 
 in a hazy, wavering atmosphere, as if they were not actual 
 scenes but the combinations of a remembered dream. One 
 does not look upon them as he looks upon living nature when 
 he stands face to face with her beauty; but they are seen 
 through a gauzy medium of memory, like places which may 
 have impressed the mind in the earliest period of its conscious- 
 Bess. . . . Words were often used by him not in their 
 common or obvious meaning but in a sense derived from re- 
 mote and complicated relations. ... A great fault of 
 Shelley's poetry is the obscurity of which so many readers 
 complain. ... A frequent cause of his obscurity is the 
 excessive subtlety and refinement of his imagination. "- 
 Parke Godwin. 
 
 " Shelley was a poetical mystic, but a poetical mystic of a 
 very unique kind. . . . Shelley's poetical mysticism is, 
 in the quick throb of its pulses, in the flush and glow of its 
 
SHELLEY 339 
 
 hectic beauty and the thrill of its exquisite anguish and 
 equally exquisite delirium of imagined bliss, essentially and to 
 the last the mysticism of intellectual youth. . . . Shel- 
 ley's idealism betrays its genuineness in the sorrowful wail, the 
 even hoarsely discordant note, which frequently sings through 
 it. ... He is an idealist to the heart's core. . . . 
 There was no inherent strength in his conception of beauty. 
 He abstracted it from the world instead of impressing it or 
 imposing it on the world. . . . His mysticism arises 
 quite as much from his refusal to acknowledge the world be- 
 yond as from his reluctance to meddle with the coarse details 
 on this side of his chosen sphere. . . . The result of his 
 idealism, as of all such idealism, was that he nowhere found 
 any true rest for his spirit, since he never came upon any free 
 and immutable will on which to lean. . . . The practical 
 centre or focus of his meaning lies concealed in his own heart, 
 while all that he pictures for us is the secondary effect exerted 
 upon himself without the causes which produced it. ... 
 There are no poms which seem more hazy to our age than his 
 political and religious dreams." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " Watching the yellow bees in the ivy bloom and the re- 
 flected pine forest in the water pools, watching the sunset as 
 it faded and the dawn as it fired, and weaving all fair and fleet- 
 ing things into a tissue where light and music were at one 
 that was the task of Shelley." Andrew Lang. 
 
 " His poetry is like the subtle veil woven by the witch of 
 Atlas from threads of fleecy mists, long lines of light such as 
 are kindled by the dawn and star-beams. When he speaks of 
 natural scenery the solid earth seems to be dissolved and we 
 are in presence of nothing but the shifting phantasmagoria of 
 cloudland, the glow of moonlight on eternal snow or the 
 golden lightning of the setting sun." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " His poetry is, in fact, a kind of air-hung mythology, 
 shadowing forth the essential principles of a creed which might 
 be called Shelleyism." David Masson. 
 
340 SHELLEY 
 
 " His sphere is the unconditioned ; he floats away into an 
 imaginary Elysium or an unexpected Utopia ; beautiful and 
 excellent of course, but having nothing in common with the 
 absolute laws of the present world. . . . Living a good 
 deal in, and writing a good deal about, the abstract world, it 
 was inevitable that he should often deal in fine subtleties, af- 
 fecting very little the concrete hearts of real men. 
 Many pages of his are in consequence nearly unintelligible, 
 even'to good critics of common poetry. . . . His intel- 
 lect did not tend to the strong grasp of realities : its taste was 
 rather for the subtle refining of theories, the distilling of ex- 
 quisite abstractions." Walter Bagehot. 
 
 " In ' Epipsychidion ' the very mood of mind tends towards 
 the intangible ; while the frame-work of imagery or symbol 
 remains to this day an enigma to the students of the poetry 
 and life of Shelley. . . . But Shelley, like Zeus, was a 
 cloud-compeller ; and of his clouds even the most vaporous 
 refuses to disperse." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " His aim is rather to render the effect of the thing than the 
 thing itself; the soul and spirit of life rather than the living form, 
 the growth rather than the thing grown." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " Shelley's ideal nature modified his religious sentiment. 
 . . . He was too fond of looking beyond the obvious and 
 the tangible to form a merely descriptive poet and too meta- 
 physical in his taste to be a purely sentimental one. In gen- 
 eral, the scope of his poems is abstract, abounding in won- 
 derful displays of fancy and allegorical invention." H. T. 
 Tuckerman. 
 
 " We move in Shelley's world between heaven and earth, 
 in abstraction, in dreamland, symbolism : the beings float in 
 it like those fantastic figures which we see in the clouds, and 
 which alternately undulate and change form capriciously, in 
 their robes of snow and gold." Taine. 
 
 " His whole conception of life is bounded only by illu- 
 sions. ' ' Edmund Gosse. 
 
SHELLEY 341 
 
 " For my part, I feel that some of the visions which Shel- 
 ley's poetry conjures up as I read it are but the phantoms, 
 showing thin and ghost-like, indeed, when I turn from them 
 to the men and women of Shakespeare's plays or Scott's novels. 
 He is in endless pursuit of unattainable ideals, ever at the heels 
 of the flying perfect." Edward Dowden. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " There was a Being whom my spirit oft 
 Met on its visioned wanderings, far aloft, 
 In the clear golden prime of my youth's dawn, 
 Upon the fairy isles of sunny lawn, 
 Amid the enchanted mountains and the caves 
 Of divine sleep, and on the air-like waves 
 Of wonder-level dream, whose tremulous floor 
 Paved her light steps. On an imagined shore, 
 Under the grey beak of some promontory, 
 She met me, robed in such exceeding glory 
 That I beheld her no\.."Epipsychidwn. 
 
 tl A portal as of shadowy adamant 
 
 Stands yawning on the highway of the life 
 
 Which we all tread, a cavern huge and gaunt. 
 Around it rages an unceasing strife 
 
 Of shadows, like the restless clouds that haunt 
 The gap of some cleft mountain, lifted high 
 Into the whirlwinds of the upper sky. 
 
 And many pass it by with careless tread, 
 
 Not knowing that a shadowy . . 
 Tracks every traveller even to where the dead 
 
 Wait peacefully for their companion new. 
 But others, by more curious humor led, 
 
 Pause to examine : these are very few, 
 And they learn little there, except to know 
 That shadows follow them where'er they go." 
 
 An Allegory. 
 
342 SHELLEY 
 
 " There late was one within whose subtle being, 
 As light and wind within some delicate cloud 
 That fades amid the blue noon's burning sky, 
 Genius and death contended. None may know 
 The sweetness of the joy which made his breath 
 Fail like the trances of the summer air, 
 When, with the lady of his love, who then 
 First knew the unreserve of mingled being, 
 He walked along the pathway of a field, 
 Which to the east a hoar wood shadowed o'er, 
 But to the west was open to the sky." The Sunset. 
 
 \. Lyrical Rapture. " The unique rapture of Shelley's 
 cry of dread, of desire, of despair, is his distinguish- 
 ing feature as a poet. . . . Other lyrical poets write of 
 what they feel, Shelley of what he wants to feel. 
 It is in such bursts of song as the ' Song of the Sixth Spirit,'' 
 or the song ' Life of Life thy Lips Enkindle ' that we find 
 lyrics which seem fuller of spiritual fire than any other Eng- 
 lish poet has poured into our language. On the whole, he 
 seems to have failed in working out any complex conception, 
 while his passion is at once more aerial and more sweet than 
 that of any other English poet." ft. H. Hutton. 
 
 " Single thrills of rapture, which are insufficient to make 
 long poems out of, supply the very inspiration for the true 
 lyric. It is the predominance of emotion, so unhappy to 
 himself, which made Shelley the lyrist that he was. When 
 he sings his lyric strains, whatever is least pleasing in him is 
 softened down, if it does not wholly disappear. Whatever is 
 most unique* and excellent in him comes out at its best his 
 eye for abstract beauty, the subtlety of his thought, the rush 
 of his eager pursuing desire, the splendor of his imagery, the 
 delicate rhythm, the matchless music." J. C. Shairp. 
 
 11 Shelley outsang all poets on record but some two or 
 three throughout all time : his depths and heights of inner and 
 outer music are as divine as Nature's and not sooner exhausti- 
 
SHELLEY 343 
 
 ble. He was the perfect singing-god ; his thoughts, words, 
 deeds, all sang together." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 ''The very isolation and suddenness of impulse which ren- 
 dered him unfit for the composition of great works rendered 
 him peculiarly fit to pour forth on a sudden the intense 
 essence of a peculiar feeling in profuse strains of unpremedi- 
 tated art. ' ' r Walter Bagehot. 
 
 "The soul of aspiring youth, un trammeled by canons of 
 taste and untamed by schoolboy discipline, swells into rapt- 
 ure at his lyric sweetness, finds ambrosial refreshment from 
 his plenteous fancies, catches fire at his daring thought." 
 Margaret Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 " Morbid his visions may have been ; but in no modern 
 poet, Byron excepted, is the purely lyric spirit so clear-tuned 
 and melodious as in the author of ' Ala&Lor. ' " Austin 
 Dobson. 
 
 " Indeed, the lyrical parfe nf thg rtran-m [< Prometheus Un- 
 bound ' ] JJ^njLJLujpJ^ ..hazmojx>L.hy 
 Sophpcles. They rise upon the ear, strains of sweet melody. 
 ravishing it with delight, and leaving^ af^jthej^Jhj.ve_rjassed 
 away, the sense of a keen but dreamy ecstasy. " Parke Godwin. 
 " ^ Witn elevation of meaning, and splendor and beauty of 
 perception, he combined the most searching, the most inimi- 
 table loveliness of verse-music." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " In none of Shelley's contemporaries was the lyrical fac- 
 ulty so paramount ; and whether we consider his minor songs, 
 his odes, or his more complicated choral dramas, we acknowl- 
 edge that he was the loftiest and the most spontaneous singer 
 of our language. . . . The poem < Hellas ' is distinguished 
 by passages of great lyrical beauty, rising at times to the sub- 
 limest raptures and closing to the half-pathetic cadence of 
 that well-known Chorus ' The world's great age begins 
 anew.' . . . The lyric movement of the Chorus from 
 ' Hellas ' . . . marks the highest point of Shelley's rhyth- 
 mical invention." John Addington Symonds. 
 
344 SHELLEY 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Teach us, sprite or bird, 
 
 What sweet thoughts are thine : 
 
 I have never heard 
 
 Praise of love or wine 
 
 That panted forth a flood of rapture so divine. 
 
 Waking or asleep, 
 
 Thou of death must deem 
 
 Things more true and deep 
 
 Than we mortals dream. 
 
 Or how could thy notes flow in such a crystal stream ? 
 
 We look before and after, 
 And pine for what is not : 
 Our sincerest laughter 
 With some pain is fraught ; 
 
 Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought." 
 
 To a Skylark. 
 " Spirit of Nature ! thou 
 Life of interminable multitudes ; 
 Soul of those mighty spheres 
 
 Whose changeless paths through heaven's deep silence lie ; 
 Soul of that smallest being 
 The dwelling of whose life 
 Is one faint April sun-gleam ; 
 Man, like these passive things, 
 Thy will unconsciously fulfilleth : 
 Like theirs, his age of endless peace, 
 Which time is fast maturing, 
 Will swiftly, surely, come ; 
 And the unbounded frame which thou pervadest 
 Will be without a flaw 
 Marring its perfect symmetry." Queen Mab. 
 
 4< Worlds on worlds are rolling ever 
 From creation to decay, 
 Like the bubbles on a river, 
 Sparkling, bursting, borne away. 
 
SHELLEY 345 
 
 But they are still immortal 
 
 Who, through birth's orient portal 
 
 And death's dark chasm hurrying to and fro, 
 
 Clothe their unceasing flight 
 
 In the brief dust and light 
 
 Gathered around their chariots as they go : 
 
 New shapes they still may weave, 
 
 New gods, new laws receive : 
 
 Bright or dim are they, as the robes they last 
 
 On Death's bare ribs had cast."Me//as. 
 
 3. Intellectual Desire Thirst Yearning . 
 
 Shelley was essentially the poet of intellectual desire, not of 
 all emotion. The thrill of some fugitive feeling, which he is 
 either vainly pursuing or which has just slipped through his 
 faint intellectual grasp, gives the key-note to every one of his 
 finest poems. . . . His ' Skylark ' is a symbol of illimitable 
 thirst drinking illimitable sweetness, an image of that rapture 
 which no man can ever reach, because it soars so far from 
 earth, because it is ever rising with unflagging wing, despising 
 old delights. . . . The eager-souled poet of unsatisfied 
 desire always thirsting, always yearning; never pouring 
 forth the strains of a thankful satisfaction but either the crav- 
 ings of an expectant rapture or the agony of a severed nerve. 
 . . . If we look at any of the lyrics on which he has set 
 the full stamp of his genius, we find that it images one of 
 these two attitudes of intellect the keen exquisite sense of 
 want gazing wildly forward or wildly backward but vainly 
 striving to close on something which eludes its grasp that is 
 the burden of every song. Whether forward or backward 
 gazing, the attitude of unsatisfied desire is always the same, 
 distinguishing Shelley from the many great contemporaries. 
 He cannot be satisfied without a thrill of his whole soul. In 
 that constant yearning which he felt for a tingling thrill of 
 new intellectual life, there was at times, as there is in all pro- 
 found love of excitement, a jarring which is ever reflected in 
 
346 SHELLEY 
 
 his general demeanor. . . . His poetry is the poetry of 
 desire. He is ever the homo desideriorurn ; always thirsting, 
 always yearning." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 11 Another passion, which no man has ever felt more strongly 
 than Shelley thfi_jjesir-tp penetrate the mysteries of f yisfr- 
 enre is deplete^ jfl * AlP sfnr ' He na( ^ * n perhaps an un- 
 equalled and unfortunate measure, the famine of intellect 
 the daily insatiable craving after the highest truth, which is 
 the passion of ' Alastor.' " Walter Bagehot. 
 
 " The soul of aspiring youth catches fire at his daring 
 thought, and melts into boundless weeping at his tender sad- 
 ness the sadness of a soul betrothed to an ideal unattainable 
 in this present sphere." Margaret Fuller Ossoli. . 
 
 " We are touched through his poetry with a certain divine 
 discontent, so that not music nor sculpture nor picture nor 
 song can wholly satisfy our spirits ; but in and through these 
 we reach after some higher beauty, some divine goodness, 
 which we may not attain yet toward which we must perpetu- 
 ally aspire. ' ' Edward Dowden. 
 
 "The object which he longed for was some abstract intel- 
 lectualized spirit of beauty and loveliness, which should thrill 
 his spirit unceasingly with delicious shocks of emotion. This 
 yearning, panting desire is expressed by him in a thousand 
 forms and figures throughout his poetry. It was not mere 
 sensuous enjoyment that he sought but keen intellectual and 
 emotional delight the mental thrill, the glow of soul, the 
 tingling of the nerves, that accompany transcendental rapt- 
 ure."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 "This persistent upward striving, this earnestness, this pas- 
 sionate intensity, this piety of soul and purity of inspiration, 
 give a quite unique spirituality to his poems." John Adding- 
 ton Symonds. 
 
SHELLEY 347 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Rarely, rarely, comest thou, 
 Spirit of Delight ! 
 Wherefore hast thou left me now 
 Many a day and night ? 
 Many a weary night and day 
 'Tis since thou art fled away." To a Skylark. 
 
 " Where art thou, beloved To-morrow ? 
 
 When, young and old, strong and weak, 
 Rich and poor, through joy and sorrow, 
 
 Thy sweet smiles we ever seek, 
 In thy place ah well-a-day ! 
 
 We find the thing we fled To-day." 
 
 To-Morrow. 
 
 I pant for the music which is divine ; 
 
 My heart in its thirst is a dying power. 
 Pour forth the sound like enchanted wine ; 
 
 Loosen the notes in a silver shower. 
 Like a herbless plain for the gentle rain, 
 I gasp, I faint, till they wake again. 
 
 Let me drink of the spirit of that sweet sound 
 
 More, oh more ! I am thirsting yet ! 
 It loosens the serpent which care has bound 
 
 Upon my heart, to stifle it ; 
 "he dissolving strain, through every vein, 
 Passes into my heart and brain." Music. 
 
 4. Awelessness Curiosity Irreverence. " Shel- 
 ley's awelessness of nature 'curiosity,' as Hazlitt calls it 
 is only the result of the limitless longing with which he seeks 
 to tear the veil from almost any secret, human or divine ; and 
 yet not in the spirit of a thirst for new truth so much as a 
 thirst for a new effervescence of nature half-way between 
 knowledge and feeling. This characteristic in Shelley is an 
 
348 SHELLEY 
 
 exceedingly different thing from that species of scoffing wit in 
 which Byron attained such pre-eminence, and which consists 
 in insolent daring displayed wantonly before the face of a mys- 
 terious or sacred Power, without ever caring to penetrate the 
 I secret of the mystery. Shelley's intellect was far subtler than 
 Byron's, and betrayed no fascination for mere acts of intel- 
 lectual impertinence. Byron was a grown-up school-boy, with 
 a keen pleasure in playing practical jokes on mighty Powers 
 in which he half believed. Shelley crept up to them with an 
 irresistible longing to peep under the veil and feel a new thrill 
 vibrate through his nature. ... I must admit that Shel- 
 ley's mind resembles that of the Greeks in not being clothed 
 with that ' instructive mutual awe ' which Plato makes, in his 
 Protagoras, the natural protection of all human society. 
 . . . That eager mind rushing breathlessly along the 
 track of imaginative desire, would have needed much to con- 
 vince it that any precincts were inviolable." J{. H. Hutton. 
 
 "Before nothing would his soul bow down. Every veil, 
 however sacred, he would rend, pierce the inner shrine of 
 being, and force it to give up its secret. There is in him a 
 profane audacity, an utter awelessness. Reverence to him 
 was another word for hated superstition. . . . Nothing 
 was to him inviolate ; all the natural reserves he would break 
 down."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 " Curiosity is the only proper category of his mind ; and 
 though a man in knowledge, he is a child in feeling." 
 Walter Bagehot. 
 
 "Shelley's nature was peculiarlyj^vereiitial, but he enter- 
 tained certain speculative doubts. Veneration was his pre- 
 dominant sentiment. Speculatively he may have been an 
 atheist; in his inmost soul he was a Christian." H. T. 
 
 ickerman. 
 
 " If that reverence which was far from wanting in his nat- 
 ure had been only presented in the person of some guide to 
 his spiritual being, with an object worthy of its homage and 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 349 
 
 trust, it is probable that the yet free and noble result of Shel- 
 ley's individuality would have been presented to the world in 
 a form which, while it attracted only a few, would not have 
 repelled the many." George Mac Donald. 
 
 "Shelley contributed a new quality to English Literature 
 a quality of ideality, freedom, and spiritual audacity, 
 which severe critics of other nations think we lack." J. A. 
 Symonds. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And this is Hell : and in this smother 
 All are damnable and damned; 
 Each one, damning, damns the other; 
 They are damned by one another, 
 By none other are they damned. 
 
 'Tis a lie to say ' God damns.' 
 
 Where was Heaven's Attorney General 
 
 When they first gave out such flams ? 
 
 Let there be an end of shams: 
 
 They are mines of poisonous mineral." 
 
 Peter Bell the Third. 
 
 " The name of God 
 
 Has fenced about all crime with holiness ; 
 Himself the creature of his worshippers; 
 Whose names and attributes and passions change 
 Seeva, Buddh, Foh, Jehovah, God, or Lord 
 Even with the human dupes who build his shrines, 
 Still serving o'er the war-polluted world 
 For desolation's watchword: whether hosts 
 Stain his death-blushing chariot-wheels, as on 
 Triumphantly they roll whilst Brahmins raise 
 A sacred hymn to mingle with the groans." 
 
 Queen Mab. 
 11 Once, early in the morning, 
 
 Beelzebub arose: 
 
 With care his sweet person adorning, 
 He put on his Sunday clothes. 
 
350 SHELLEY 
 
 " And then to St. James's Court he went, 
 
 And St. Paul's Church he took on his way ; 
 He was mighty thick with every saint, 
 Though they were formal and he was gay. 
 
 A priest at whose elbow the Devil during prayer 
 
 Sate, familiarly, side by side, 
 Declared that, if the tempter were there, 
 
 His presence he would not abide. 
 
 ' Ah ah ! ' thought old Nick, ' that's a very stale trick ; 
 For without the Devil, O favorite of evil, 
 
 In your carriage you would not ride.' " 
 
 The Devils Walk. 
 
 5. Acute Sensibility Sympathy." Shelley was en- 
 dowed by nature with a sensibility acutely alive to the most 
 fleeting shades of joy and pain warm, full, and unselfish in 
 its love, deep-toned and mighty in its indignation. This 
 fiery spiritual essence was enclosed in a frame sensitive enough 
 to be its fit embodiment. No reader of Shelley can be igno- 
 rant that some of the most beautiful exhibitions of the tender- 
 est and simplest affections of the heart are to be found in his 
 writings ; that he had an ear exquisitely tuned to catch the 
 still sad music of humanity, that human hopes and fears and 
 loves all woke sympathetic echoes in his heart; that the lan- 
 guage of human passions kindles and burns along his cre- 
 ations, often with a might and freedom almost Shakesperian." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " His appropriate sphere is what I may call swift sensi- 
 bility, the intersecting line between the sensuous and the in- 
 tellectual or moral. Mere sensation is too literal for him, 
 mere feeling too blind and dumb, thought too cold ; but in 
 the line where sensation and feeling are just passing into 
 thought . . . his great power lay." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " I thought of Shelley so we all think of him as a man 
 of extraordinary sensitiveness and susceptibility, susceptibil- 
 ity, above all, to ideal impressions. . . . Shelley's pri- 
 
SHELLEY 351 
 
 vate happiness did not dull his sensibility to the wrongs of 
 the world. . . . Shelley's sympathetic delight in the in- 
 nocent joy of children and all happy creatures did not hinder 
 or check a passion of charity for those who were sufferers, 
 brethren of his own in sorrow, sickness, and need." Ed- 
 ward Dowden. 
 
 " Shelley's sensibility was vivid but peculiar. . 
 The nerves of Shelley quivered at the idea of loveliness ; but 
 no coarse sensation obtruded particular objects upon him." 
 Walter Bagehot. 
 
 " Shelley seems to us an incarnation of what was sought in 
 the sympathies and desires of instructive life, a light of dawn 
 and a foreshadowing of the weather of his day." Margaret 
 Fuller Ossoli. 
 
 " It is easy to perceive throughout ['Queen Mab'] that the 
 writer's ungovernable sensibilities ran away with his other 
 faculties. ' ' Parke Godwin. 
 
 " He had the lawlessness of the man with the sensibility of 
 the woman." Charles Kings ley. 
 
 " Nonconformity of tastes might easily arise between two 
 parties without much blame to either when one of the two 
 had received from nature an intellect and a temperament so 
 dangerously eccentric, and constitutionally carried, by del- 
 icacy so exquisite of organization, to eternal restlessness and 
 irritability of nerves, if not absolutely at times to lunacy." 
 De Quincey. 
 
 11 His poem [ The Sensitive Plant '], the story of a plant, is 
 also the story of a soul Shelley's soul, the sensitive." Tame. 
 
 11 In this have I long believed that my power consists; in 
 sympathy and that part of the imagination which relates to 
 sentiment and contemplation I am formed, if for anything 
 now in common with the herd of mankind, to apprehend re- 
 mote and minute distinctions of feelings, whether relative to 
 the external nature or to the living beings which surround 
 us." Shelley. 
 
352 SHELLEY 
 
 " To Mr. Shelley all that exists exists indeed color, 
 sound, motion, thought, sentiment, the lofty and the hum- 
 ble, great and small, detail and generality from the beauties 
 of the blade of grass or the evanescent tint of a cloud to the 
 heart of a man, which he would elevate and the mysterious 
 spirit of the universe, which he would seat above worship 
 itself." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 " The very first letter [of Shelley], as one instance for all, 
 strikes the keynote of the predominating sentiment of Shel- 
 ley throughout his life his sympathy with the oppressed." 
 Browning. 
 
 " Shelley had in him that element of wide sympathy and 
 lofty hope for his kind which is essential both to the birth 
 and the subsequent making of the greatest poets." George 
 MacDonald. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Music, when soft voices die, 
 Vibrates in the memory ; 
 Odors, when sweet violets sicken, 
 Live within the sense they quicken. 
 
 Rose-leaves, when the rose is dead, 
 Are heaped for the beloved's bed ; 
 And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, 
 Love itself shall slumber on." To . 
 
 " Are there not hopes within thee which this scene 
 Of linked and gradual being has confirmed 
 Whose stingings bade thy heart look further still, 
 When, to the moonlight walk by Henry led, 
 Sweetly and sadly thou didst talk of death ? 
 And wilt thou rudely tear them from thy breast, 
 Listening supinely to a bigot's creed, 
 Or tamely crouching to the tyrant's rod 
 Whose iron thongs are red with human gore ? 
 Never ; but, bravely bearing on, thy will 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 353 
 
 Is destined an eternal war to wage 
 With tyranny and falsehood, and uproot 
 The germs of misery from the human heart. 
 Thine is the hand whose piety would soothe 
 The thorny pillow of unhappy crime, 
 (Whose impotence an easy pardon gains) 
 Watching its wanderings as a friend's disease." 
 
 Queen Mab. 
 "Men of England, wherefore plough 
 
 For the lords who lay ye low ? 
 
 Wherefore weave with toil and care 
 
 The rich robes your tyrants wear ? 
 
 Wherefore feed and clothe and save, 
 From the cradle to the grave, 
 Those ungrateful drones who would 
 Drain your sweat nay, drink your blood ? 
 
 Wherefore, Bees of England, forge 
 Many a weapon, chain, and scourge, 
 That these stingless drones may spoil 
 The forced produce of your toil ? 
 
 Have ye leisure, comfort, calm, 
 Shelter, food, love's gentle balm ? 
 Or what is it ye buy so dear 
 With your pain and with your fear ? 
 
 The seed ye sow another reaps ; 
 The wealth ye find another keeps ; 
 The robes ye weave another wears ; 
 The arms ye forge another bears." 
 
 To the Men of England. 
 
 6. Rare Imaginative Power. " So keen was his in- 
 tellectual vision that he saw shapes where others saw none and 
 shades and distinctions of shade where, to others, it was blank 
 vacuity or darkness. He possessed, in an eminent degree, that 
 faculty which peoples the universe with tenuous and gossamer 
 23 
 
354 SHELLEY 
 
 existences, which sees a faery world in drops of dew, which 
 sports with the creatures of the elements, which is of finer in- 
 sight and more spiritual texture than the brains of ordinary 
 mortals. If Shelley errs in the excessive use of this faculty, 
 we are also indebted to it for some of the most beautiful con- 
 ceptions that ever adorned the pages of poetry." Parke 
 Godwin. 
 
 " If Coleridge is the sweetest of our poets, Shelley is at 
 once the most ethereal and the most gorgeous ; the one who 
 has clothed his thoughts in draperies of the most evanescent 
 and most magnificent words and imagery." Leigh Hunt. 
 
 " Excess of imagination makes it impossible for him to re- 
 alize and reconcile himself to his surroundings. . . . The 
 fact is, Shelley was a poet and a poet in whom the imagina- 
 tion was disproportionally developed. He was a creature not 
 of reason, not of intellect, not of moral purpose, not of pas- 
 sion, but of feelings and imaginations." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " If greatness in poetry consisted in a succession of daz- 
 zling images and a rapid flow of splendid verse, Shelley would 
 be entitled to almost the first place in literature." W. J. 
 Courthope. 
 
 " He possessed an imagination marvellously endowed with 
 the power to give shape and hue to the most shadowy abstrac- 
 tions which his soaring mind clutched on the vanishing points 
 of human intelligence ; a fancy quick to discern the most re- 
 mote analogies, brilliant, excursive, aerial, affluent in graceful 
 and felicitous images." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " His mode of thinking is not according to the terrestrial 
 conditions of time, place, cause and effect, variety of race, cli- 
 mate, and costume. His persons are shapes, winged forms, 
 modernized versions of Grecian mythology, or mortals highly 
 allegorized ; and their movements are vague, swift, and inde- 
 pendent of ordinary physical laws." David Masson. 
 
 " The strong imagination of Shelley made him an idolater 
 in his own despite. Out of the most indefinite terms of a cold, 
 
SHELLEY 355 
 
 hard, dark, metaphysical system he made a gorgeous Pantheon, 
 full of beautiful, majestic, and life-like forms. He turned 
 atheism itself into a mythology, rich with visions as glorious 
 as the gods that live in the marble of Phidias or the virgii 
 saints that smile on us from the canvas of Murillo. The 
 spirit of Beauty, the Principle of Good, the Principle of Evil, 
 when he treated of them, ceased to be abstractions. They 
 took shape and color. They were no longer mere words but 
 intelligible forms; ' fair humanities; ' objects of love, adora- 
 tion, or fear." Macaulay. 
 
 " His images pass before the mind like frost-work at moon- 
 light, strangely beautiful, glittering and rare, but of transient 
 duration and dream-like interest." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " From hard realities, from weariness of beholding oppres- 
 sion, Shelley rose like his own ' Skylark ' into the trackless 
 ether of imagination, which he filled with a glorious music 
 and a quiver of joyous wings." Austin Dobson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A Sensitive Plant in a garden grew ; 
 
 And the young winds fed it with silver dew ; 
 And it opened its fan-like leaves to the light, 
 And closed them beneath the kisses of Night. 
 
 And the Spring arose on the garden fair, 
 Like the spirit of Love felt everywhere ; 
 And each flower and herb on earth's dark breast 
 Rose from the dreams of its wintry rest." 
 
 The Sensitive Plant. 
 " Evening came on ; 
 
 The beams of sunset hung their rainbow hues 
 High 'mid the shifting domes of sheeted spray 
 That canopied his path o'er the waste deep ; 
 Twilight, ascending slowly from the east, 
 Entwined in duskier wreaths her braided locks 
 O'er the fair front and radiant eyes of day : 
 Night followed, clad with stars." Alastor. 
 
356 SHELLEY 
 
 " I sift the snow on the mountains below, 
 And their great pines groan aghast ; 
 And all the night 'tis my pillow white, 
 While I sleep in the arms of the Blast. 
 Sublime on the towers of my skyey bowers 
 Lightning my pilot sits ; 
 In a cavern under is fettered the Thunder, 
 It struggles and howls at fits. 
 O'er earth and ocean with gentle motion 
 This pilot is guiding me, 
 Lured by the love of the Genii that move 
 In the depths of the purple sea ; 
 Over the rills and the crags and the hills, 
 Over the lakes and the plains, 
 Wherevej he dream under mountain or stream 
 The Spirit he loves remains ; 
 And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile, 
 Whilst he is dissolving in rains." 7 he Cloud. 
 
 7. Intensity. " Shelley's life was intense, and though 
 >nly in his thirtieth year when his beloved element wrapped him 
 in the embrace of death, the snows of premature age flecked his 
 auburn locks ; and in sensation and experience he was wont 
 to say he had far out-sped the calendar." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 " Like an improvisatore, he gives rein to his fancy, and 
 dashes wildly onward wherever the bewildering trains of thick- 
 coming associations may lead. He was mastered by his genius 
 rather than master of it. It was chiefly in the glow and in- 
 tensity of his sentiments that the fast fusing power of his im- 
 agination was manifest. His heart, burning with the purest 
 fires of love, seemed to melt all nature into a liquid mass of 
 good ness. ' ' Parke Godwin . 
 
 11 The consuming intensity, indeed, with which his soul 
 burned within him at the sight and thought of tyranny, 
 amounted almost to madness. It ran along his veins like a 
 tingling fire. His bursts of vehement feeling appear occasion- 
 ally to rend and tear his frame in their passionate utter- 
 
SHELLEY 357 
 
 ance. . . . What he felt and thought, he felt and thought 
 with such intensity as to make his life identical with his 
 verse." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Shelley composed with all his faculties, mental, emotional, 
 and physical, at the utmost strain, at a white heat of intense 
 fervor, striving to attain one object, the truest and most pas- 
 sionate Investiture for the thoughts which had inflamed his 
 ever-quick imagination. ... In his intense enthusiasm 
 he lost his hold on common sense, which might have saved 
 him from the puerility of arrogant iconoclasm. All his sensa- 
 tions were abnormally acute, and his ever active imagination 
 confused the borderlands of the actual and the visionary. He 
 was entirely a child of impulse, lived and longed for high- 
 strung emotion, simple, all absorbing, all penetrating emotion, 
 going straight on in one direction to its object, hating and 
 resenting whatever opposed its progress thitherward." John 
 Addington Symonds. 
 
 "An idea, an emotion grew upon his brain, his breast heaved, 
 his frame shook, his nerves quivered with the ' harmonious 
 madness ' of imaginative concentration." Walter Bagehot. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " An old, blind, mad, despised, and dying king, 
 Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow 
 Through public scorn mud from a muddy spring, 
 Rulers who neither see nor feel nor know, 
 But, leech-like, to their fainting country cling, 
 Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow, 
 A people starved and stabbed in the unfilled field, 
 An army which liberticide and prey 
 Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield, 
 Golden and sjanguine laws, which tempt and slay, 
 Religion Christless, Godless a book sealed ; 
 A Senate Time's worst statute unrepealed 
 Are graves from which a glorious phantom may 
 Burst to illumine our tempestuous day." England in 1819. 
 
358 , SHELLEY 
 
 " Oh let a father's curse be on thy soul, 
 
 And let a daughter's hope be on thy tomb, 
 And both on thy gray head a leaden cowl 
 
 To weigh thee down to thine approaching doom ! 
 
 I curse thee by a parent's outraged love j 
 By hopes long cherished and too lately lost ; 
 
 By gentle feelings thou couldst never prove ; 
 By griefs which thy stern nature never crossed." 
 
 To the Lord Chancellor. 
 
 " Horses, oxen, have a home 
 When from daily toil they come ; 
 Household dogs, when the wind roars, 
 Find a home within warm doors ; 
 
 Asses, swine, have litter spread, 
 And with fitting food are fed ; 
 All things have a home but one 
 Thou, O Englishman, hast none ! 
 
 This is Slavery ! Savage men, 
 Or wild beasts within a den, 
 Would endure not as ye do ; 
 But such ills they never knew." 
 
 The Masque of Anarchy. 
 
 8. Taste for the Horrible. "Shelley not infrequently 
 and purposely dips into curdling subjects, simply for the sake 
 of the chill to the blood, the vibration of the nerves. There 
 is not one of his longer poems in which he does not alternate 
 the breathless upward flight of his own skylark with occa- 
 sional plunges into a weird world of morbid horrors. . . . 
 There was mingled with all his beauty a mind that was cer- 
 tainly unearthly, a vein of unearthly and ghastly delight in 
 violating natural instinct, as illustrated, for instance, to take a 
 very mild example, in the ghoulish prescription which he 
 wrote out under a household recipe of Mary Godwin's. His 
 early poems, especially, are full of wormy horrors, and the 
 
SHELLEY 359 
 
 loathsomeness of the incidents on which the plot of ' The 
 Cenci ' turns evidently had a dreadful fascination for him." 
 R. H. Hutton. 
 
 11 So far, indeed, from Shelley's having a peculiar tendency 
 to dwell on and prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a 
 perverse tendency to draw out into lingering keenness the 
 torture of agony. The night-shade is as common in his 
 poems as the daisy." Walter Bagehot. 
 
 11 He has shown himself what the dramatist needs to be 
 as able to face the light of heaven as of hell, to handle the 
 fires of evil as to brighten the beauties of things." A. C. 
 Swinburne. 
 
 " He turns to darkness and mystery and despair and hor- 
 ror wantonly, when all the sweeter secrets of nature are open 
 to him, and without knowing, with the most curious obtuse- 
 ness in the midst of his genius, unfolds all his horrors and 
 misery. He revelled in the tempestuous loveliness of terror." 
 H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " In ' The Sensitive Plant ' . . . one curious idiosyn- 
 crasy is more prominent than any other ; . . . it is 
 the tendency to be fascinated by whatever is ugly and revolt- 
 ing, so that he cannot withdraw his thoughts from it till he 
 has described it in language powerful, it is true, and poetic, 
 when considered as to its fitness for the end desired, but in 
 force of these very excellences in the means, nearly as revolt- 
 ing as the objects themselves." George MacDonald. 
 
 "His hungry craving was for intellectual beauty and the 
 delight it yields; if not that, then for horror, anything to 
 thrill the nerves, though it should curdle the blood and make 
 the flesh creep. ' ' /. C. Shatrp. 
 
 " I agree with Mr. Gilfillan heartily in protesting against 
 the thoughtless assertion of some writer in the Edinburgh 
 Review that Shelley at all selected the story of his ' Cenci ' 
 on account of its horrors or that he has found pleasure in 
 dwelling on those horrors." De Quincey. 
 
360 SHELLEY 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And plants at whose name the verse feels loth 
 Filled the place with a monstrous undergrowth, 
 Prickly and pulpous and blistering and blue, 
 Livid, and starred with a lurid dew. 
 
 Their moss rotted off them flake by flake, 
 Till the thick stalk stuck like a murderer's stake, 
 Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high, 
 Infecting the winds that wander by." 
 
 The Sensitive Plant. 
 
 11 How comes this hair undone ? 
 
 Its wandering strings must be what blind me so, 
 And yet I tied it fast. Oh horrible ! 
 The pavement sinks under my feet ! the walls 
 Spin round ! I see a woman weeping there, 
 And standing calm and motionless, whilst I 
 Slide giddily as the world reels ! My God ! 
 The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood ! 
 The sunshine on the floor is black ! the air 
 Is changed to vapors such as the dead breathe 
 In charnel pits ! Pah ! I am choked ! 
 
 There creeps 
 
 A clinging, black, contaminating mist 
 About me 'tis substantial, heavy, thick ; 
 I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues 
 My fingers and limbs to one another, 
 And eats into my sinews, and dissolves 
 My flesh to a pollution, poisoning 
 The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life ! 
 My God ! I never knew what the mad felt 
 Before ; for I am mad beyond all doubt ! " The Cenci. 
 
 " Methought that grate was lifted, and the seven 
 Who brought me thither, four stiff corpses bare, 
 And from the frieze to the four winds of heaven 
 Hung them on high by the entangled hair ; 
 
SHELLEY 36l 
 
 A woman's shape, now lank and cold and blue, 
 
 The dwelling of the many-colored worm, 
 
 Hung there ; the white and hollow cheek I drew 
 
 To my dry lips What radiance did inform 
 
 Those horny eyes ? whose was that withered form ? " 
 
 Revolt of Islam. 
 
 9. Fearlessness Sincerity High Ideals." He 
 
 was no tongue-hero, no fine virtue prattler. He did not 
 speak from his lungs but from his soul. And sooner than be- 
 tray one honest conviction of his intellect, sooner than award 
 ' mouth-honor' to what he hated as cruelty and oppression, he 
 was willing to have his genius derided and his name defamed. 
 . . . He was always terribly in earnest. What he felt 
 and thought, he felt and thought with such intensity as to 
 make his life identical with his verse. He was a hero in the 
 epic life of the nineteenth century. Ideas, abstractions, which 
 pass like flakes of snow into other minds, fell upon his heart 
 like sparks of fire. ... He desired society to be pure, free, 
 unselfish, devoted to the realization of goodness and beauty ; 
 and he believed it capable of that exaltation. ... No 
 man ever lived with a deeper and more inextinguishable thirst 
 to promote human liberty and happiness." E. P. Wliipple. 
 
 " One of the first things to be observed is the elevated con- 
 ception which he had formed, and always strove to carry 
 with him, of the true function and destiny of the poet. The 
 vocation of the bard impressed him as the highest of all voca- 
 tions. . . . No poet that has come after him, and few 
 that were gone before him, had equal power of stirring within 
 the soul of humanity such noble aspirations, such fervent 
 love of freedom, such high resolves in the cause of virtue and 
 intelligence, and such prophetic yearnings for the better 
 future . " Parke Godwin . 
 
 " There is a wisdom which the world sometimes counts as 
 folly that which consists in devotion at all hazards to an 
 ideal, to what stands with us for the highest truth, sacred jus- 
 
362 SHELLEY 
 
 tice, purest love. And assuredly the tendency of Shelley's 
 poetry, however we may venerate ideals other than his, is to 
 quicken the sense that there is such an exalted wisdom as this 
 and to stimulate us to its pursuit. . . . Shelley at the age 
 of nineteen was possessed by an inextinguishable hope for the 
 world and an enthusiasm of humanity which never ceased to 
 inspire his deeds and words. . . . He had a conviction 
 that it is in the power of everyone, young or old, to dc some- 
 thing to bring nearer the world's great age ; that it is the 
 duty of everyone to contribute something to the public good. 
 Shelley, in 'Alastor,' would rebuke the seeker for 
 beauty and the seeker for truth> however high-minded, who 
 attempts to exist without human sympathy; and he would 
 rebuke the ever-unsatisfied idealist in his own heart. 
 It was, as Shelley believed, in a peculiar degree a poet's duty 
 to sustain the hopes and aspirations of men in their movements 
 of advance and at the same time to endeavor to hold their 
 passions in check by presenting high ideals and showing that 
 the better life of society is not to be rung oat of the air by 
 sudden and desperate snatching. . . . Shelley is abso- 
 lutely free from any touch of untruthfulness in his opinions. 
 No idea of self-restraint would ever make him hide his views. 
 He could always believe what he wished to believe 
 and bring himself to see facts not as they were but as they 
 ought to be." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " Whatever Shelley was, he was with an admirable sin- 
 cerity. It was not always truth that he thought and spoke ; 
 but in the purity of truth he spoke and thought always." 
 Robert Browning. 
 
 " No man was more single-minded, none a more ardent 
 lover of abstract truth and ideal virtue."- W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " Balance against all the ill that you can ever think of him 
 that he was a man able to live wretched for the sake of speak- 
 ing sincerely what he supposed to be truth, willing to die for 
 the good of his fellows." Margaret Puller Ossoli. 
 
SHELLEY 363 
 
 " There is in Shelley at once a singularly ethereal nature 
 and a singularly unthinking defiance of everything in human 
 emotion which does not at once explain itself." R. H. 
 Hutton. 
 
 ' ' The cause for regret is that so few should have paid 
 homage to his pure and sincere intentions. Where can we 
 find an individual in modern history of more exalted aims 
 than Shelley? I honor Shelley as that rare character a sin- 
 cere man." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " He was the sincerest and most truthful of human creat- 
 ures." De Quineey. 
 
 " The cardinal characteristic of his nature was an implaca- 
 ble antagonism to shams and conventions, which passed too 
 easily into impatient rejection of established forms as worse 
 than useless. ... To the world he presented the rare 
 spectacle of a man passionate for truth and unreservedly obe- 
 dient to the right as he discerned it. ... There was 
 ever present in his nature an effort, an aspiration after the 
 better than the best this world can show, which prompted 
 him to blend the choicest products of his thought and fancy 
 with the fairest image borrowed from the earth on which he 
 lived. He never willingly composed, except under the im- 
 pulse to body forth a vision of the love and light and life 
 which was the spirit of the power which he worshipped." 
 John Addington Symonds. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " There is a nobler glory, which survives 
 Until our being fades, and, solacing 
 All human care, accompanies its change ; 
 Deserts not Virtue in the dungeon's gloom, 
 And, in the precincts of the palace, guides 
 His footsteps through that labyrinth of crime ; 
 Imbues his lineaments with dauntlessness, 
 Even when from Power's avenging hand he takes 
 
364 SHELLEY 
 
 Its sweetest, last, and noblest title death ; 
 The consciousness of good, which neither gold 
 Nor sordid fame nor hope of heavenly bliss 
 Can purchase ; but a life of resolute good, 
 Unalterable will, quenchless desire 
 Of universal happiness." Queen Mab. 
 
 " What are numbers, knit by force or custom ? 
 Man who man would be 
 Must rule the empire of himself in it ! 
 Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
 On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
 Of hopes and fears, being himself alone." Sonnet. 
 
 " And when Reason's voice, 
 
 Loud as the voice of Nature, shall have waked 
 The nations ; and mankind perceive that vice 
 Is discord, war, and misery that virtue 
 Is peace and happiness and harmony ; 
 When man's maturer nature shall disdain 
 The playthings of its childhood ; kingly glare 
 Will lose its power to dazzle ; its authority 
 Will silently pass by ; the gorgeous throne 
 Shall stand unnoticed in the regal hall 
 Fast falling to decay ; whilst falsehood's trade 
 Shall be as hateful and unprofitable 
 As that of truth is now." Queen Mab. 
 
 10. Love of Liberty Independence Lawless- 
 ness. "He hated oppression and stormed against it; but 
 then all rule and authority he regarded as an oppression. He 
 was altogether a child of impulse of impulse one, total, all- 
 absorbing. And the impulse that came to him he followed 
 whithersoever it went, without questioning either himself or 
 it."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 "If love, justice, hope, freedom, fraternity be real, then 
 so is the wiser part of the inspiration of Shelley's radiant 
 song. . . . But at the root of all was an absolute refusal 
 
SHELLEY 365 
 
 to submit to any sort of discipline or to acknowledge any 
 form of authority. . . . Any one who attempted to re- 
 strain him he dubbed a tyrant, and he invariably refused to 
 learn any thing when he was taught. . . . Always preach- 
 ing justice and tolerance, there are few who have formed 
 more unjust opinions and indulged in more intolerant out- 
 bursts. ' ' Edward Dowden. 
 
 11 Neither the cruel jibes of his fellows nor menaces of pun- 
 ishment on the part of his superiors could bend a will whose 
 single law was the self-imposed law of truth. He rejected an 
 obedience which could only be performed at the expense of 
 self-respect. . . . An over-fine notion of freedom brought 
 him into conflict with masters and laws. . . . Every page 
 of ' Queen Mab ' is a fiery protest against the frauds and des- 
 potisms of priest and king. ... To him the French 
 Revolution was not a failure. . . . The evils of that 
 frightful upturning of society seemed to him, as they now 
 seem to every observant mind, transient, while the good was 
 durable. ' ' Parke Godwin. 
 
 " His whole life through was a denial of external law and 
 a substitution in its place of internal sentiment. 
 Shelley's cry is, ' There is a law, and therefore I am miserable. 
 Why should not the law be abolished? Away with it, for it 
 interferes with my sentiments.' . . . Lawless love is 
 Shelley's expressed ideal of the relation of the sexes, and his 
 justice, his benevolence, his pity, are all equally lawless." 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Freedom he regarded as the dearest boon of existence. 
 Highly imaginative, susceptible, and brave, even in 
 boyhood he reverenced the honest convictions of his own 
 mind above success or authority." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " In Shelley we see a certain type of revolutionist, born out 
 of due time, and directed to the bloodless field of literature." 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 
 " His passionate love of liberty, his loathing for intoler- 
 
366 SHELLEY 
 
 ance, his impatience of control . . . combined to make 
 him the Quixotic champion of extreme opinions." John 
 Addington Symonds. 
 
 " l Prometheus Unbound,' however remote the foundation 
 of its subject matter and unactual its executive treatment, 
 does in reality express the most modern of conceptions the 
 utmost reach of speculation of a mind which burst up all 
 crusts of custom and prescription like a volcano, and imaged 
 forth a future wherein man should be indeed the autocrat and 
 the renovated renovation of his planet. . . . It is the ideal 
 poem of perpetual and triumphant progression the Atlantis 
 of Man Emancipated." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 "He was in early years first a revolter; he took nothing 
 upon authority ; he acknowledged no validity in the customs 
 and beliefs which past experience had bequeathed to men : 
 he must examine every conclusion anew and accept or regret 
 it by the light of his own limited thought and observation." 
 G. . Woodberry. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A glorious people vibrated again 
 
 The lightning of the nations : Liberty, 
 
 From heart to heart, from tower to tower, o'er Spain, 
 
 Scattering contagious fire into the sky, 
 
 Gleamed. My soul spurned the chains of its dismay, 
 
 And in the rapid plumes of song 
 
 Clothed itself, sublime and strong 
 
 As a young eagle soars the morning clouds among, 
 
 Hovering inverse o'er its accustomed prey : 
 
 Till from its station in the heaven of Fame 
 
 The Spirit's whirlwind rapt it ; and the ray 
 
 Of the remotest sphere of living flame 
 
 Which paves the void was from behind it flung, 
 
 As foam from the ship's swiftness, when there came 
 
 A voice out of the deep ; 1 will record the same." 
 
 Ode to Liberty. 
 
SHELLEY 
 
 As an eagle fed with morning 
 
 Scorns the embattled tempest's warning 
 
 When she seeks her aerie hanging 
 
 In the mountain-cedar's hair, 
 
 And her brood expect the clanging 
 
 Of her wings through the wild air, 
 
 Sick with famine ; Freedom so 
 
 To what Greece remaineth now 
 
 Returns. Her hoary ruins glow 
 
 Like orient mountains lost in day ; 
 
 Beneath the safety of her wings 
 
 Her renovated nurslings play, 
 
 And in the naked lightenings 
 
 Of truth they purge their dazzled eyes. 
 
 Let Freedom leave, where'er she flies, 
 
 A desert or a paradise ; 
 
 Let the beautiful and the brave 
 
 Share her glory or a grave ! " Hellas. 
 
 Honey from silk-worms who can gather, 
 Or silk from the yellow bee ? 
 
 The grass may grow in winter-weather 
 As soon as hate in me. 
 
 Hate men who cant and men who pray 
 And men who rail, like thee ; 
 
 An equal passion to repay 
 They are not coy like me. 
 
 Or seek some slave of power and gold 
 To be that dear heart's mate ; 
 
 Thy love will move that bigot cold 
 Sooner than me thy hate. 
 
 36; 
 
 A passion like the one I prove 
 
 Cannot divided be : 
 I hate thy want of truth and love 
 
 How should I then hate thee ? " 
 
 Lines to a Critic. 
 
368 SHELLEY 
 
 II. Optimism Faith in Humanity. " It was his 
 
 aim as poet to send forth sounds that might shake the reign 
 of ' Anarch Custom ' and hasten the blessed era in whose 
 coming he believed." David Masson. 
 
 " He quickens within us a sense of the possibilities of great- 
 ness and goodness hidden in man and woman. . . . And 
 who has heartened us more than Shelley, with all his errors, 
 to love freedom, to hope all things, to endure all things, and 
 even while the gloom gathers to have faith in the dawn of 
 light ? ' ' Edward Dow den. 
 
 "All the malignity of his foes and all the suffering which 
 fell to his lot only served to make the flame of his philanthropy 
 burn the brighter and with a purer radiance." Walter 
 Bagehot. 
 
 " Though he experienced the malevolence of humanity 
 himself, he met inhumanity by humanity, and translated into 
 his daily life the spirit that breathes through the Beatitudes. 
 He counted his days not by the calendars of men but by the 
 calendar of nature. Nothing existed that to him was not a 
 minister of grace." G. B. Smith. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 The world's great age begins anew, 
 
 The golden years return, 
 
 The earth doth like a snake renew 
 
 Her winter weeds outworn : 
 
 Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires gleam 
 
 Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 
 
 Another Athens shall arise, 
 
 And to remoter time 
 
 Bequeath, like sunset to the skies, 
 
 The splendor of its prime ; 
 
 And leave, if nought so bright may live, 
 
 All earth can take and heaven can give." Hellas. 
 
SHELLEY 369 
 
 
 !< Drive my dead thoughts over the universe, 
 Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth ; 
 And, by the incarnation of this verse, 
 Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
 Ashes and sparks, my words among mankind ! 
 Be through my lips to unawakened earth 
 The trumpet of a prophecy ! Oh Wind, 
 If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind ? " 
 
 Ode to the West Wind. 
 
 " These are the seals of that most firm assurance 
 Which bars the pit over Destruction's strength ; 
 And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
 Mother of many acts and hours, should free 
 The serpent that would clasp her with his length, 
 These are the spells by which to reassume 
 An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 
 
 To suffer woes which hope thinks infinite ; 
 To forgive wrongs darker than death or night ; 
 To defy power which seems omnipotent ; 
 To love and bear ; to hope till hope creates 
 From its own wreck the thing it contemplates ; 
 Neither to change nor falter nor repent ; 
 This, like thy glory, Titan, is to be 
 Good, great, and joyous ; beautiful and free ; 
 This alone Life, Joy, Empire, Victory ! " 
 
 Prometheus Unbound. 
 
 12. Sensualism Impulsiveness. "I rather think 
 that the late Mr. Bagehot was nearer the mark when he as- 
 serted that in Shelley the conscience never had been revealed 
 that he was almost entirely without conscience. 
 Of this double nature, this inward strife between flesh and 
 spirit, Shelley knew nothing. . . . Shelley may be the 
 prophet of a new morality, but it is one. that can never be 
 realized till moral law has been obliterated from the universe 
 and conscience from the heart of man. . . . I am in- 
 24 
 
370 SHELLEY 
 
 clined to believe that, for all his noble impulses and aims, he 
 was some way deficient in rational and moral sanity." J. C. 
 Shairp. 
 
 " ' Follow your instincts,' is his one moral rule, confound- 
 ing the very lowest animal instincts with those lofty ideas of 
 right which it was the will of Heaven he should retain." 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " Shelley's imagination busied itself with fusing together 
 mental and sensuous impressions into symbols of rare beauty. 
 . . . A thin world of distilled loveliness and spontaneous 
 instinct, but containing nothing that could be called the 
 strength of divine love." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " Shelley is probably the most remarkable instance of the 
 purely impulsive character, to comprehend which requires a 
 little detail. . . . We fancy his mind placed in the light 
 of thought, with pure subtle fancies playing to and fro. On a 
 sudden an impulse arises ; it is alone, and has nothing to con- 
 tend with ; it cramps the intellect, pushes aside the fancies, 
 constrains the nature ; it bolts forward into action. . . . 
 The ' Epipsychidion ' could not have been written by a man 
 who attached a moral value to constancy of mind. . . . 
 The evidence of Shelley's poems confirms this impression of 
 him. The characters which he delineates have all this same 
 kind of pure impulse. The reforming impulse is especially 
 felt. . . . Shelley's political opinions were likewise the 
 effervescence of his peculiar nature. The love of liberty is 
 peculiarly natural to the simple impulsive mind." Walter 
 Bagehot. 
 
 " Shelley had all the merit of generous aspirations and feel- 
 ings, but he was singularly deficient in self-control. He was 
 guided entirely by his impulses; his impulses were often high 
 and lofty, but they had never been controlled." Edward 
 Dow den. 
 
 " His emotional power dominated his intellectual power." 
 Parke Godwin. 
 
SHELLEY 371 
 
 " His movements are represented as rapid, hurried, and un- 
 certain. He would appear and disappear suddenly and unex- 
 pectedly ; forget appointments; burst into wild laughter, 
 heedless of his situation, whenever anything struck him as 
 peculiarly ridiculous." George Mac Donald. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " She would have clasped me to her glowing frame ; 
 Those warm and odorous lips might soon have shed 
 On mine the fragrance and the invisible flame 
 Which now the cold winds stole ; she would have laid 
 Upon my languid heart her dearest head ; 
 I might have heard her voice tender and sweet ; 
 Her eyes, mingling with mine, might soon have fed 
 My soul with their own joy. One moment yet 
 I gazed we parted then, never again to meet ! " 
 
 The Revolt of Islam. 
 
 " See, the mountains kiss high heaven, 
 And the waves clasp one another ; 
 No sister flower would be forgiven 
 If it disdained its brother ; 
 
 And the sunlight clasps the earth, 
 And the moonbeams kiss the sea ; 
 
 What are all these kissings worth, 
 
 If thou kiss not me ? " Loves Philosophy. 
 
 " Thus to be lost and thus to sink and die 
 
 Perchance were death indeed ! Constantia, turn ! 
 In thy dark eyes a power like light doth lie, 
 Even though the sounds which were thy voice which burn, 
 Between thy lips, are laid to sleep ; 
 Within thy breath and on thy hair, like odor, it is yet, 
 And from thy touch like fire doth leap. 
 Even while I write, my burning cheeks are wet ; 
 Alas that the torn heart can bleed but not forget ! " 
 
 To Constantia 
 
BYRON, 1788-1824 
 
 Biographical Outline. George Gordon, sixth Lord 
 Byron, born in Hollis Street, London, January 22, 1788; 
 father, "a handsome profligate," who first eloped with a 
 marchioness, then, after her divorce, married her, and after 
 her death married Gordon's mother for her money; Byron 
 was a cripple from his birth, the tendons of one heel being 
 so contracted as to cause a limp; Byron's mother's fortune is 
 soon wasted, all except an income of ^150 a year, on which 
 she retires to Aberdeen with the child, and lives in seclusion 
 in Queen Street; for a time the father occupied separate 
 apartments near by, and sometimes petted the child; but he 
 soon obtained money from his wife or his sister and escaped 
 to France, where he died in 1791, possibly by his own hand; 
 soon afterward Mrs. Byron's income is raised to .190, on 
 which she and her son continue to live ; as a child Byron is 
 treated by his mother with alternate violence and tenderness, 
 sometimes worshipped and at others called " a lame brat ; " 
 he is passionately attached to his nurse, Mary Gray, and 
 learns from Dr. Ewing, of Aberdeen, much of the lore of the 
 English Bible ; Byron first attends a private school, then learns 
 some Latin from the son of his shoemaker, and is at the 
 Aberdeen Grammar School from 1794 to 1798; as a school- 
 boy he is "warm-hearted, pugnacious, and idle;" during 
 the vacations he visits the mountain districts about Ballanter, 
 and dates thence his love of sublime scenery ; in his eighth 
 year he falls " violently " in love with a cousin, Mary Driff, 
 and is nearly thrown into convulsions, in his sixteenth year, 
 on hearing of her marriage. 
 
 In 1794, Byron succeeds to the peerage, and in October, 
 
 372 
 
BYRON 373 
 
 1 798, a pension of ^300 is given to his mother by the Govern- 
 ment ; soon afterward she goes with Byron to Newstead, where 
 there was a property belonging to the family worth about 
 ^1,500 a year; Mrs. Byron now settles at Nottingham, and 
 sends the boy to the private school of one Rogers ; he is tortured 
 by the remedies applied to his foot by a quack named Lavendar, 
 and writes a lampoon on that worthy ; in 1799 ^ e ^ s taken 
 by his mother to London, is placed under the care of a skil- 
 ful surgeon, and is sent to Dr. Glennie's school, near by ; 
 Glennie finds him " playful, amiable, and intelligent, ill- 
 grounded in scholarship, but familiar with scriptures and a 
 devourer of poetry ;" while at Glennie's, Byron reads a 
 pamphlet account of a shipwreck, which he afterward worked 
 up in the plot of his "Don Juan," and here also he writes 
 his first love-poem, addressed to his cousin, Margaret Parker, 
 who died a year or two later ; Byron declares that his passion 
 produced its " usual effect " in preventing sleep and appetite; 
 by the summer of 1801 Mrs. Byron's temper and her med- 
 dling with the discipline of the boy become insupportable to 
 Glennie and to Byron's guardian, Lord Carlisle, and he is 
 sent to Harrow, where he becomes the pupil of Dr. Drury, 
 who wins the boy's affection and respect ; Byron detests the 
 "daily drug" of classical lessors, and is always "idle, in 
 mischief, or at play," but reads voraciously by fits, and ex- 
 cels in declamation ; he hates Harrow until his last year and 
 a half, when he becomes a leader; in spite of his lameness he 
 is an athlete, and fights Lord Calthorpe for writing " damned 
 atheist " under his name ; in March, 1805, he leads the school- 
 boys in a revolt against the appointment of Dr. Butler, Drury's 
 successor, whom Byron afterward satirized in " Hours of 
 Idleness " under the name of " Pomposus ; " he forms warm 
 attachments at Harrow, and once offers to take half the thrash- 
 ing inflicted by a bully on Sir Robert Peel ; during his 
 Harrow days Byron often visits Annesley Hall, the seat of his 
 distant relatives, and there falls desperately in love with his 
 
374 BYRON 
 
 cousin, Mary Anne Chaworth ; he is greatly agitated on hear- 
 ing of her marriage, in 1805, and this passion seems to have 
 left the most permanent traces on his li f e. 
 
 In October, 1805, he enters Trinity College as a "noble- 
 man ; " he is described by his tutor as " a youth of tumultu- 
 ous passions," fond of riding, skating, and boxing, the patron 
 of a prize-fighter, and a marvellous swimmer ; in August, 1807, 
 he boasts of swimming three miles in the Thames at London ; 
 he travels in a two-horse carriage with a groom, a valet, and 
 two dogs ; he has frequent and violent quarrels with his 
 mother, one of which ends in her throwing a poker and tongs 
 at his head ; he is fond of gambling, and at one time travels 
 with a girl in boy's clothes for a companion, whom he intro- 
 duces as his younger brother; he admits, in 1808, being in 
 debt nearly ^10,000 ; at one time he brings a bear to col- 
 lege, and insists that the animal sit for a fellowship; his 
 attendance at Cambridge is very irregular, but he takes M.A. 
 July 4, 1808 ; in 1813 he presents ^"1,000 to a college 
 friend in financial embarrassment ; among his closest friends 
 at Cambridge are John C. Hobhouse, afterward Lord Brough- 
 ton, whose friendship with Byron lasted during life, and C. 
 A. Matthews, a most decided and outspoken atheist ; in his 
 juvenile letters Byron boasts that he has been held up as the 
 " votary of licentiousness and disciple of infidelity " and that 
 he has read or looked through historical books and novels " by 
 the thousand ; " his memory is remarkable; in November, 
 1806, he prints privately a small volume of poems entitled 
 " Fugitive Pieces," but soon destroys all but two copies on 
 the protest of a Southwell clergyman against the license of one 
 poem; in January, 1807, he distributes a hundred copies of 
 the volume, reprinted without the offensive poem, under the 
 title of " Poems on Various Occasions ; " this volume attracts 
 some favorable notice, and in the following summer he pub- 
 lishes " Hours of Idleness," a collection of his original poems 
 and translations, including twenty of those before printed 
 
BYRON 375 
 
 privately ; a new edition of the " Hours " appears in March, 
 1808; meantime, in January, 1808, appears the famous criti- 
 cism of the Edinburgh Review, probably written by Brough- 
 am ; Byron at once "drank three bottles of claret and be- 
 gan his reply." 
 
 On leaving Cambridge he settles on his ancestral seat, 
 Newstead Abbey, then in ruinous condition, where he makes a 
 few rooms habitable, and enters upon life-long litigation to re- 
 cover other inherited property; on March 13, 1809, he takes 
 his seat in the House of Lords; his "English Bards and 
 Scotch Reviewers ' ' appears during the same month, and 
 reaches a second edition in April ; a third and a fourth edi- 
 tion appear in 1810 and 1811, but the fifth edition, prepared 
 by Byron in 1811, is by him suppressed because many of his 
 victims have then become friendly ; in 1817 Byron tells Mur- 
 ray that he will never consent to the republication of the 
 satire; during the spring of 1809 he entertains his college 
 friends at Newstead, where they dress as monks, drink wine 
 from a human skull, and otherwise offend the proprieties ; on 
 July 2, 1809, Byron sails for Lisbon with Hobhouse and 
 three servants ; thence he rides across Spain to Seville and 
 Cadiz, whence he sails to Gibraltar ; thence to Malta, where 
 he meets a Mrs. Spencer Smith, to whom he afterward 
 addresses his poem "To Florence" and stanzas 30-33 in 
 " Childe Harold," Book II. ; from Malta he sails to Prevesa 
 and Tehelen, and narrowly escapes shipwreck ; in November 
 he travels to Missolonghi, through Acarnania, with a guard of 
 Albanians ; thence, at Christmas time, to Athens, where he 
 lodges with Mrs. Macri, widow of the English Vice-consul, 
 whose daughter Theresa is Byron's " Maid of Athens ; " 
 leaving Athens in March, 1810, Byron visits, successively, 
 Ephesus, Constantinople, and the Troad, and on May 3d he 
 accomplishes the celebrated feat of swimming, like Leander, 
 across the Hellespont from Sestos to Abydos; Byron leaves 
 Constantinople July i4th, and returns with his servant to 
 
376 BYRON 
 
 Athens, while Hobhouse returns to England ; Byron professes 
 to have saved a girl from being drowned in a sack, during this 
 voyage, an adventure later turned to account in ''The Giaour ;" 
 he makes a tour in the Morea, is severely ill with a fever at 
 Patras, and returns to spend the winter of 1810-11 in the 
 Capuchin monastery at Athens; in the spring of 1811 he sails 
 for England, stops at Malta, and reaches London July i5th ; in 
 a letter written during the voyage home Byron declares that he 
 is returning " embarrassed, unsocial, without a hope, and al- 
 most without a desire ; " he had spent over ^10,000 a year 
 at Cambridge, and had obtained loans from the Jews ; in 
 February, 1810, his creditors had threatened the sale of New- 
 stead ; he prepares to enter the army, and has to borrow 
 money with which to reach London on his return from the 
 East ; while in London he hears of his mother's illness ; be- 
 fore he can reach her she dies, August i, 1811, " in a fit of 
 rage caused by reading the upholsterer's bills;" the loss of 
 his mother and of five intimate friends during four months 
 affects Byron deeply, and he is found sobbing over his 
 mother's remains ; the lady mentioned in his poems as 
 "Thyrza," and whom he seems to have loved passionately 
 but purely, has never been identified. 
 
 In October, 1811, he takes lodgings in St. James Street, 
 London, where he shows to a friend the first two cantos of 
 " Childe Harold," composed while he was abroad, and 
 "Hints from Horace," a paraphrase of the " Ars Poetica;" 
 arrangements are made to publish the latter, but, apparently 
 from the lack of a good classical reviser, it does not appear till 
 after Byron's death; "Childe Harold" is refused by one 
 publisher because of the attack on Lord Elgin as the despoiler 
 of the Parthenon, but it is accepted by Murray, who continues 
 thereafter to be Byron's publisher ; " Childe Harold " appears 
 April 21, 1812, and is astonishingly successful ; the first edi- 
 tion is sold immediately, and, as Byron says, he "awoke one 
 morning and found himself famous ; " for the copyright Mur- 
 
BYRON 377 
 
 ray pays him ^600, which Byron gives to his friend Dallas, 
 declaring that he will never take money for his poems ; during 
 the early part of 1812 Byron makes three speeches in the 
 House of Lords ; he becomes " the idol of the sentimental 
 part of society," and meets Moore, Campbell, and Rogers at 
 a dinner given by the latter, where Byron confines his diet to 
 potatoes and vinegar his method of preventing himself from 
 getting too fat ; he soon becomes intimate with Moore, al- 
 though, during Byron's absence, Moore had sent him a chal- 
 lenge because of certain lines in the "English Bards; " at 
 this time Byron is described by Coleridge and others as a man 
 of surpassing physical beauty ; during this and his later years 
 he practised the most rigorous diet in order to reduce his 
 weight, and often lived on a small allowance of rice alone ; at 
 intervals he varied this rigor, briefly, with the most excessive 
 eating and drinking; he is said to have written " Don Juan" 
 "on gin and water;" in the spring of 1813 he publishes 
 " The Waltz," which he disowns on its failure ; "The Giaour" 
 appears in May, 1813, "The Bride of Abydos" in December, 
 1813, and "The Corsair" in January, 1814 ; by the autumn of 
 1813 "The Giaour" reaches a fifth edition, when it is increased 
 from 400 to 1400 lines; the first sketch of the "Bride" was 
 written in four nights, and the ' ' Corsair " in ten days ; the latter 
 was hardly revised at all, and 14,000 copies were sold in a single 
 day ; in April, 1814, Byron composes his ode on the abdication 
 of Napoleon, and in the following June finishes " Lara," which 
 is published in August, 1814, in the same volume with Rogers's 
 "Jacqueline; " Byron's "Hebrew Melodies," written on re- 
 quest, appeared with music in January, 1815; " The Siege of 
 Corinth" and "Parisina" appear in January and February, 
 1816, and Murray pays over ^1,200 for the copyright of the 
 two poems; about this time Byron refuses to take 1,000 
 guineas for the poems, although it was proposed to hand over 
 the money to Godwin, Coleridge, and Maturin ; he afterward 
 became less scrupulous about receiving money for his literary 
 
378 BYRON 
 
 work; meantime Byron was prominent in London society, 
 was recognized as a second Beau Brummell, and engaged in 
 gayeties as a member of half a dozen London clubs ; he en- 
 ters into intrigues with various fashionable women, especially 
 Lady Caroline Lamb. 
 
 In September, 1814, he offers marriage to Miss Milbanke, a 
 niece of Lady Lamb, a scholarly woman, somewhat prudish 
 and pedantic, a friend of Miss Edgeworth and Miss Siddons, 
 and heiress to a considerable fortune; he is accepted, and is 
 married at Seaham near Durham, January 2, 1815 ; in the fol- 
 lowing March they settle at 13 Piccadilly Terrace, London, 
 where they remain during their married life ; in spite of 
 numerous reports to the contrary, their early married life 
 seems to have been happy ; but Byron's financial troubles 
 increased ; he had obtained ^25,000 from a forfeited sale of 
 Newstead in 1812, but this had soon vanished, and in Novem- 
 ber, 1815, he is obliged to sell his library ; yet he still refuses 
 to take money for his copyrights ; he becomes a zealous 
 playgoer, and is often at parties "where all ends in hiccup 
 and happiness ; " in July, 1815, with the consent and approval 
 of Lady Byron, who was well provided for by her own inher- 
 itance, Byron wills all his property to his sister, Mrs. Leigh, 
 and her children; on December 10, 1815, his only child, a 
 daughter, is born, and soon afterward Byron urges his wife to 
 go with the child to the home of her father till some arrange- 
 ment can be made with his creditors; as she now believes 
 Byron insane, Lady Byron leaves London for her father's 
 home January 15, 1816 ; she writes Byron affectionately, but, 
 as the physicians can find no proof of insanity, she decides 
 upon a separation ; Byron at first refuses an amicable separa- 
 tion, but afterward consents rather than take the case into 
 the courts ; he is accused " of every monstrous vice," and is 
 even threatened with mob violence, although Leigh Hunt and 
 others defend his character; in March, 1816, he writes 
 "A Sketch" a scathing attack on Mrs. Clemont, Lady 
 
BYROtf 379 
 
 Byron's maid, who is supposed to have been concerned in 
 certain revelations of Byron's wickedness to his wife and dur- 
 ing the same month the lines to his wife beginning " Fare thee 
 well," in which he expostulates with her for inflicting a " cure- 
 less wound ; " he declares to Moore that no blame attaches to 
 Lady Byron; in 1816 he made overtures for a reconciliation 
 with his wife but was refused, and wrote " A Dream" and a 
 novel called " Marriage of Belphegor," narrating his own 
 story, which he destroyed on hearing of Lady Byron's illness, 
 although a remnant is given in the notes of " Don Juan." 
 
 He sails for Ostend, April 24, 1816, and travels in luxurious 
 style with Dr. Polidori, a young Swiss, as a companion, and 
 two servants ; he soon changes his resolution as to pay for 
 literary work, and drives sharp bargains with Murray ; he re- 
 ceives 2,000 guineas for the fourth canto of " Childe Harold," 
 and by the end of 1821 has received from Murray ,15,455 
 for his copyrights and manuscripts; in November, 1817, he 
 finally sells Newstead for 90,000 guineas; the payment of the 
 debts and mortgages leaves him an income of the interest on 
 ^"60,000 during his life ; he grows more prudent and " affects 
 avarice as a good old gentlemanly vice ; " he visits Brussells 
 and Waterloo, and goes thence by the Rhine to Geneva, 
 where he takes the Villa Diodati on the south side of the lake; 
 here he meets the Shelleys and Miss Clairmont, who had come 
 from England expressly to meet him, and the life of the party 
 gives rise to much scandal ; during the summer Byron and 
 Shelley make a tour of the lake, are nearly lost in a storm, 
 and while spending two rainy days at Ouchy Byron writes the 
 "Prisoner of Chillon; " about the same time he completes the 
 third canto of " Childe Harold," in which he shows the effect 
 of being "dosed to nausea with Wordsworth" by Shelley; 
 in the following September Byron makes a tour of the Bernese 
 Oberland with Hobhouse, his life-long friend, and takes notes 
 on the scenery; while at the Villa Diodati he writes also " To 
 Augusta," the verses addressed "To my sweet Sister" (sup- 
 
380 BYRON 
 
 pressed at her request till after his death), the monody on the 
 death of Sheridan, and the fragment called " Darkness; " in 
 January, 1817, a daughter by Byron is born to Miss Clair- 
 mont, and is sent to him at Venice with a Swiss nurse ; he 
 refuses the offer of a lady to adopt the child, places her in a 
 convent near Ravenna, where he pays double fees to insure 
 her good treatment, and leaves her ^5,000 as a marriage- 
 portion ; the child died in April, 1822, and was profoundly 
 mourned by Byron, although he was indifferent and even hostile 
 to her mother; in October Byron and Hobhouse cross the 
 Simplon to Milan and proceed thence to Venice, where Byron 
 resides for the next three years, taking a house at La Mira on 
 the Brenta; in the spring of 1817 he visits Rome, and sends 
 thence to Murray, in May, a new third act of "Manfred," as 
 he had heard that the original was unsatisfactory ; as his 
 "mind wants something craggy to break upon," he begins to 
 study Armenian at the Venetian Monastery ; later he takes the 
 Palazzo Mocenigo on the Grand Canal, N here he plunges into 
 " degrading excesses which injured his constitution and after- 
 ward produced bitter self-reproach;" here he writes the 
 fourth canto of " Childe Harold," "Beppo" (published by 
 Murray in May, 1819), and "Don Juan; " the first five 
 cantos of "Don Juan" are published without the name of 
 either author or publisher, and Byron is somewhat discon- 
 certed at the outcry against it; in 1819 he " falls in love " 
 with the Countess Guiccioli, an Italian beauty of sixteen, re- 
 cently married to a man of sixty; he visits her at Ravenna, 
 with the consent of her husband, studies medicine in order to 
 aid her in recovering her health, and follows her to Bologna ; 
 in the absence of the Count, Byron travels with the Countess 
 to Venice by way of the Euganean hills, and then establishes 
 her at his house at La Mira ; Venetian society is shocked, and 
 " English tourists stared at Byron like a wild beast ; " at Ra- 
 venna Byron had written " River That Rollest by the Ancient 
 Walls," and from Bologna he had sent to Murray his " Letter 
 
BYRON 381 
 
 to My Grandmother's Review ; " Count Guiccioli asks Byron 
 for a "loan " of ^1,000, and Moore advises Byron to give 
 the money and return the Countess, but Byron insists that he 
 will "save both the lady and the money; " in October, 1819, 
 the Countess returns to her husband, and Byron talks of visit- 
 ing England and dreams of settling in Venezuela in Bolivar's 
 new republic ; after all the preparations are made for the trip 
 to England, he suddenly changes his plans, accepts the invita- 
 tion of the Countess to visit her, and is back in Ravenna at 
 Christmas time, 1819 ; his daily routine at this time and dur- 
 ing his later life was as follows : " He rose very late, took a 
 cup of green tea, had a biscuit and soda-water at two, rode 
 out and practised shooting, dined most abstemiously, visited 
 in the evening, and returned to read or write till two or three 
 in the morning; " in disgust at the reception given to " Don 
 Juan," he discontinues it after the fifth canto ; in February, 
 1820, he translates " Morgante Maggwre " and in March the 
 Francesca da Rimini episode; he begins his first drama, 
 " Marino Faliero" April 4th, and finishes it July i6th ; it is 
 produced in London during the following spring, and fails, 
 much to Byron's annoyance; early in 1821 he begins his 
 " Sardanapalus, " and finishes it May 1 3th, writing the last three 
 acts in a fortnight ; he writes " The Two Foscari " within a 
 month and "Cain" in less than two months; during this 
 same year, 1821, he also writes "The Deformed Trans- 
 formed," and begins his dramatization, " Werner; " early in 
 1821 he writes his vigorous letters on the Pope controversy; 
 his dramas, written at this period, are "often mere prose 
 broken into apparent verse; " "no literary hack could have 
 written more rapidly, and some could have written as well." 
 In July, 1821, the Countess Guiccioli is divorced from her 
 husband by a Papal decree and retires to a villa, where Byron 
 visits her frequently, passing the intervals in "perfect 
 solitude;" Byron now becomes connected with the revolu- 
 tionary movement in Italy, contributes funds, and is made 
 
BYRON 
 
 head of the Americani, a section of the Carbonari or revo- 
 lutionary party ; when the scheme is destroyed by the Aus- 
 trian troops, Byron's associates are banished, and strong 
 pressure is placed upon him to induce him to leave Italy ; at 
 this time he has an income of ^4,000 a year, and devotes 
 ; 1,000 to charity; he calls Shelley from Pisa to advise him, 
 and finally leaves Venice for Pisa in October, 1821, " preceded 
 by his family of monkeys, dogs, cats, and pea-hens; " on the 
 way he meets Rogers at Bologna ; he settles at the Casa Lan- 
 franchi in Pisa, and the relatives of the Countess Guiccioli 
 occupy a part of the same palace ; at Pisa he is socially inti- 
 mate with Trelawney and Shelley ; he continues " Don Juan," 
 by permission of the Countess, and has finished cantos six, 
 seven, and eight by August, 1822; meantime "Cain" had 
 been received with hostility, and Murray had grown cautious 
 about publishing more of Byron's works ; Byron and Shelley 
 now propose to found a revolutionary paper with Leigh Hunt 
 for editor, and they import that unfortunate genius from Lon- 
 don with his wife and six children ; the Hunt family take up 
 their residence in Byron's palace ; the paper, called The Lib- 
 eral, survives through only four numbers, and contains By- 
 ron's "Vision of Judgment," his "Letter to My Grand- 
 mother's Review," his " Heaven and Earth," his "Blues," 
 his " Morgante Maggiore," and a few epigrams ; in the pub- 
 lication of the "Vision of Judgment" culminated a long 
 and savage quarrel between Byron and Southey, during which 
 Byron had challenged Southey, though the challenge had been 
 suppressed by Byron's friend Kinnaird ; during the summer 
 of 1822 Byron is forced to leave Pisa by a stabbing affray 
 between his servants and the soldiery, and he spends several 
 months with the Countess Guiccioli near Leghorn ; during 
 the summer occurred the drowning of Shelley and the famous 
 cremation of his body by Byron, Trelawney, and others. 
 
 From Pisa, late in the summer of 1822, Byron removes his 
 household to Genoa, where he settles in the Casa Salucci at 
 
BYRON 383 
 
 Albaro ; during the summer he had swum with Trelavvney out 
 to his schooner, three miles and back ; at Genoa he meets 
 Lady Blessington, who has since recorded her conversations 
 with him ; he grows more restless, declares that he does not 
 think literature his vocation, and says that if he lives ten years 
 longer he will do something ; when the Greek committee is 
 formed in London, in the spring of 1823, Byron, at Trelaw- 
 ney's suggestion, is made a member; on July i5th he sails 
 from Genoa for the Levant with Trelawney and several ser- 
 vants in a " collier-built tub," which he had bought and fitted 
 out ; he takes 10,000 crowns of specie and 40,000 in bills ; on 
 the way they touch at Leghorn, where Byron secures a copy of 
 verses from Goethe ; they reach Cephalonia August 2d, and 
 Byron remains there at a village called Metaxata till December 
 27th, while Trelawney and the rest go forward; he sails for 
 Missolonghi December 28th, and reaches there after narrow 
 escapes from shipwreck and capture by the Turks ; he raises 
 funds for the Greeks on his own credit, and in January is 
 made commander-in-chief of the Greek troops ; while severely 
 ill in January, he courageously awes a crowd of mutineers, who 
 had broken into his room ; in the spring of 1824, while still 
 at Missolonghi, Byron declines an appointment as " governor- 
 general of Greece ;" he continues to starve himself to prevent 
 obesity, but his health is seriously undermined by the mala- 
 rial conditions at Missolonghi ; he frees certain Turkish 
 prisoners at Missolonghi, and adopts a child found among 
 them ; he dies of fever and bad medical treatment at Misso- 
 longhi, April 19, 1824 ; his body was buried at Hucknall 
 Forkard, England. 
 
384 BYRON 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BYRON. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, i: 
 
 267-299. 
 Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 
 
 163-205. 
 Jeffrey, F., " Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, A. Hart, 
 
 6 : 316-335 and 434-446. 
 Morley, J., "Critical Miscellanies." New York, 1893, Macmillan, I: 
 
 203-253. 
 Lang, A., "Letters to Dead Authors." New York, 1892, Longmans, 
 
 Greene & Co., 170-180. 
 Hazlitt, Wm., "Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, G. Bell Son, 117- 
 
 135- 
 Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 
 
 1 : 458-492- 
 
 Kingsley, Chas., "Literary and General Essays." New York, 1890, 
 
 Macmillan, 35-61. 
 
 Mazzini, J., "Essays." London, 1887, Walter Scott, 82-109. 
 Elze, K., "Byron, a Biography." London, 1872, Murray, 377-433. 
 Swinburne, A. C., "Essays and Studies." London, 1875, Chatto & 
 
 Windus, 238-259. 
 Rossetti, W. M., "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Ward & 
 
 Lock, 287-307. 
 Arnold, M., "Essays in Criticism." London, 1888, Macmillan, 163- 
 
 204. 
 Scott, Sir W., "Critical and Miscellaneous Essays." Philadelphia, 
 
 1841. Carey and Hart, 244-265. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1848, 165- 
 
 174. 
 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Symonds). London, 1881, Macmil- 
 lan, 4 : 244-256. 
 Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 24-28. 
 Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890. Scribner, 
 
 56-63. 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 
 
 2 : 163-199. 
 
 Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1852, J. Hogg, 2 : 
 
 27-42. 
 Hannay, J., " Satire and Satirists." New York, 1855, Redfield, 204-218. 
 
BYRON 385 
 
 Nichol, J., " English Men of Letters " (Byron). New York, 1880, Har- 
 per, 198-212. 
 
 Collier, W. F., " History of English Literature." London, 1892, Nel- 
 son, 3 8 5-392. 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1889, 
 Macmillan, 3 : 9-36 and 44-94 and 95-132. 
 
 Moore, T., "Life, Letters, and Journal of Byron." London, 1866, 
 Murray, v. index. 
 
 Mather, J. M., " Popular Studies." London, 1892, Warne, 79-97. 
 
 Caine, T. H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, E. Stock, 91-119. 
 
 Chorley, H. F., "The Authors of England." London, 1888, C. Tilt, 
 14-21. 
 
 Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 
 London, 1885, Murray, 111-156. 
 
 Dennis, J., " Heroes of Literature." London, 1883, 344-364. 
 
 Devey, J., " A Comparative Estimate." London, 1873, Moxon, 184-211. 
 
 Friswell, J. H., " Essays on English Writers." London, 1880, Low 
 & Marston, 315-327. 
 
 Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 
 Scribner, 5-71. 
 
 Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., 261-276. 
 
 Castelar, E., " Byron and Other Sketches." New York, 1876, Harper, 
 2 : 331-402. 
 
 Scherer, E., "Essays in English Literature." New York, 1891, Scrib- 
 ner, 174-225. 
 
 Bookman, 5 : 63-66 (A. Lang). 
 
 Harper's Weekly, 41 : 270 (W. D. Howells). 
 
 Scribner's Monthly, 22 : 345-359 (F. B. Sanborn) ; 21 : 501-517 (F. B. 
 Sanborn). 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 40 : 189-262 (G. S. Venables) ; 14 : 650-6,73 (J. 
 Morley). 
 
 Academy, 23 : 357~35 8 ( T - H - Caine). 
 
 Methodist Review, 48 : 666-686 (C. T. Winchester). 
 
 Nation, 46 : 66-68 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 
 Knickerbocker Magazine, 21 : 199-212 (Carlyle). 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 53 : 544-572 (Macaulay) ; u : 285-289 (H. Brough- 
 am) ; 38: 2 7-48 (Jeffrey); 27 : 277-310 (Jeffrey); 30 : 87-120 (Prof. 
 Wilson). 
 
 North American Review, 60 : 64-86 (E. P. Whipple). 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, 48 : 568-576 (C. Kingsley). 
 
 Quarterly Review, 16 : 172-178 (Sir Walter Scott). 
 25 
 
386 BYRON 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Intensity Passion. "J3is passion is perfect a 
 fierce and blind .desire, w hi ch jsxalts- and .impels hisu-verse into 
 the high plane of emotion and expression. He feeds upon 
 nature with a holy hunger, follows her with a divine lust, as 
 of gods chasing the daughters of men. Wind and fire, the 
 cadences of thunder and the clamors of the sea, gave to him 
 no less a sensual pleasure than a spiritual sustenance. "- 
 A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " The tremendous depth and intensity of passion, which 
 Byron was capable of representing with such marvellous skill 
 of expression, is powerfully displayed in his misanthropical 
 creations, and tends to give them much of the sorcery they 
 exercise on the feelings. . . . He is eminently a poet of 
 passion. In almost all the changes of his mood the same 
 energy of feeling glows in his verse. The thought or emotion 
 uppermost in his mind at anytime, whether it be bad or good, 
 seems to sway, for the moment, all the faculties of his nature. 
 /He has a passionate love for evil, a passionate love for nature, 
 for goodness, for beauty, and we may add, a passionate love 
 for himself."^. P. Whipple. 
 
 " In his nervous and manly lines we find no amplification 
 of common sentiments no ostentatious polishing of pretty 
 expressions. On the contrary, we have a perpetual stream of 
 thick^coming fancies an eternal spring of fresh-blown images, 
 which seem called into existence by the sudden flash of those 
 glowing thoughts and overwhelming emotions that struggle for 
 expression through the whole flow of his poetry, and impart 
 a diction that is often absurd and irregular, a force and charm 
 which frequently realize all that is said of inspiration."- 
 Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " There was the heart, ardent at the call of freedom or of 
 generous feeling, and belying every moment the frozen shrine 
 in which false philosophy had incarved it, glowing like the 
 
BYRON 387 
 
 intense and concentrated alcohol, which remains one single 
 but burning drop in the centre of the ice which its more 
 watery particles have formed." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " If ever there was a violent and madly sensitive soul, 
 it was Byron's. This promptitude to extreme emo- 
 tions was with him a family legacy and the result of educa- 
 tion. . . . When he went to school his friendships were 
 passions. . . . Small or great, the passion of the hour 
 swept down upon his mind like a tempest, roused him, trans- 
 ported him into either imprudence or genius. . . . All 
 styles appear dull and all souls sluggish beside his. . . . 
 There were internal tempests within him, avalanches of ideas, 
 which found issue only in writing." Tame. 
 
 "Jlis passionate nature could alone, prfl^nrp snr h a g^ragm 
 as * Don Juan.* The vigorous reality which breaks 
 forth in Byron's verses reproduces all the being of the poet in 
 each one of those cadences which exhibit the beatings of his 
 heart. . . . His poetry is always illuminated by a ray of 
 lightning." Emilio Castelar. 
 
 " Byron was too violent, and for that reason not true enough 
 to answer the lasting needs of the soul." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " Byron's mind was the battle field of contending im- 
 pulses. . . . The intensity of his feelings imparts to his 
 style a splendor and passion that raises it [ Childe Harold '] 
 far above the diction of his earlier poems. . . . Looking 
 at his poetry from a purely lyrical standpoint, it is surely im- 
 possible for any man not to be carried away on the tide of its 
 power and passion." W. H. Courthope. 
 
 "It is hardly too much to say that Lord Byron could ex- 
 hibit only one man and one woman a man proud, moody, 
 cynical, with defiance on his brow and misery in his heart, a 
 scorner of his kind, implacable in revenge, yet capable of deep 
 and strong affection ; a woman all softness and gentleness, 
 loving to caress and be caressed, but capable of being trans- 
 formed by passion into a tigress." Macaulay. 
 
388 BYRON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I am too well avenged ! but 'twas my right ; 
 Whate'er my sins might be, thou wert not sent 
 To be the Nemesis who should requite 
 Nor did Heaven choose so near an instrument. 
 Mercy is for the merciful ! if thou 
 Hast been of such, 'twill be accorded now. 
 Thy nights are banished from the realms of sleep ! 
 Yes ! they may flatter thee, but thou shalt feel 
 A hollow agony which will not heal, 
 For thou art pillowed on a curse too deep ; 
 Thou hast sown in my sorrow, and must reap 
 The bitter harvest of a woe as real ! " To Lady Byron. 
 
 " The cold in clime are cold in blood, 
 Their love can scarce deserve the name ; 
 But mine was like the lava flood 
 That boils in Aetna's breast of flame. 
 
 If changing cheek and scorching vein, 
 
 Lips taught to writhe but not complain, 
 
 If bursting heart and madd'ning brain 
 
 And daring deed and vengeful steel 
 
 And all that I have felt and feel 
 
 Betoken love that love was mine, 
 
 And shown by many a bitter sign." The Giaour. 
 
 " Souls who dare use their immortality 
 
 Souls who dare look the Omnipotent tyrant in 
 
 His everlasting face and tell Him that 
 
 His evil is not good ! If He has made, 
 
 As He saith which I know not nor believe 
 
 But, if He made us He cannot unmake : 
 
 We are immortal ! Nay, He'd have us so, 
 
 That He may torture : let Him! He is great 
 
 But, in His greatness, is no happier than 
 
 We in our conflict ! Goodness would not make 
 
 Evil : and what else hath He made ? But let Him 
 
 Sit on His vast and solitary throne, 
 
BYRON 389 
 
 Creating worlds, to make eternity 
 
 Less burdensome to His immense existence 
 
 And unparticipated solitude ; 
 
 Let Him crowd orb on orb : He is alone, 
 
 Indefinite, indissoluble tyrant ; 
 
 Could He but crush Himself, 'twere the best boon 
 
 He ever granted ; but, let Him reign on, 
 
 And multiply Himself in misery !" Cain. 
 
 Misanthropy Malignity. " He was completely 
 
 master of the whole rhetoric of despair and desperation. . . . 
 Overfall these works, amid the most brilliant shows of wit 
 and imagination, are thrown the sable hues of misanthropy 
 and despair. They are all held in the bondage of one frown- 
 ing and bitter feeling. . . . They all display the gulf of 
 darkness and despair into which great genius is hurried when 
 it is delivered over to bad passions. . . . His misan- 
 thropy, real or affected, sometimes induced him fr> give 
 prominence to qualities essentially unpoetical. The frequent 
 pervasion of his powers and the unhealthy moral atmosphere 
 which surrounds some of his splendid expressions have given 
 rise to a sarcastic epigram, which declares that his ethical 
 system is compounded of misanthropy and licentiousness, the 
 first command of which is, ' Hate your neighbor, and love 
 your neighbor's wife.' " E, P. Whipple. 
 
 11 Never had any writer so vast a command of the whole 
 eloquence of scorn, misanthropy, and despair. That Marah 
 was never dry. No art could sweeten, no draughts could ex- 
 haust its perennial waters of bitterness. . . . Year after 
 year and month after month he continued to repeat that to 
 be wretched was the destiny of all ; that to be eminently 
 wretched is the destiny of the eminent ; that all the desires 
 by which we are cursed lead alike to misery if they are not 
 gratified, to the misery of disappointment ; if they are grati- 
 fied, to the misery o^jatiety. His heroes are men who have 
 arrived by different roads at the same goal of despair, who 
 
390 BYRON 
 
 are sick of life, who are at war with society, . . . and 
 who to the last defy the whole power of earth and heaven. 
 He always described himself as a man of the same kind with 
 his favorite creations; as a man whose heart had been 
 withered, whose capacity for happiness was gone and could 
 not be restored, but whose invincible spirit dared the worst 
 that could befall him here or hereafter. . . . There was 
 created in the minds of many of these enthusiasts a perni- 
 cious and absurd association between intellectual power and 
 moral depravity. From the poetry of Lord Byron they drew 
 a system of ethics, compounded of misanthropy and voluptu- 
 ousness, a system in which the great commandments were, to 
 hate your neighbor and to love your neighbor's wife." 
 Macaulay. 
 
 " There is the canker of misanthropy at the core of all he 
 touches. . . . We are acquainted with no writing so well 
 calculated to extinguish in young minds all generous enthusi- 
 asm and gentle affection all respect for themselves, and all 
 love for their kind and actually to persuade them that it is 
 wise and manly and knowing to laugh not only at self-denial 
 and restraint but at all aspiring ambition and all warm and 
 constant affection. . . . It seems to be Lord Bvron's 
 way never to excite a kind or noble sentiment without mak- 
 ing haste to obliterate it by a torrent of unfeeling mockery or 
 relentless abuse and taking pains to show how well these pass- 
 ing fantasies may be reconciled to a system of resolute misan- 
 thropy. . . . We do not consider it unfair to say that 
 Lord Byron appears to us to be the zealous apostle of a cer- 
 tain fierce and magnificent misanthropy, which has already 
 saddened his poetry with too deep a shade, and not only led 
 to a great misapplication of great talents, but contributed to 
 render popular some very false estimates of the constituents 
 of human happiness and merit." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 11 What does he find in science but deficiencies, and in re- 
 ligion but mummeries ? Does he so much as preserve poetry ? 
 
BYRON 391 
 
 Of the divine mantle, the last garment which a poet respects, 
 he makes a rag to stamp upon, to wring, to make holes in, 
 out of sheer wantonness. ... A darkness which seems 
 eternal fell upon his soul, so that at times he saw evil in 
 everything. . . . Byron, being unhappy, distinguished 
 himself among all other poets as Satan is distinguished among 
 all angels." Emilio Castelar. 
 
 " Moody and misanthropical, he rejected the whole manner 
 of thought of his predecessors ; and the scepticism of the 
 eighteenth century suited him as little as its popular be- 
 lief. . . . He proclaimed to the world his misery . and 
 dgsgair. ' ' Thomas Arnold. 
 
 "It P Don Juan '1 is a WOrk f]\]\ flf sniil f hiftprljy ^yfpf^ T p 
 
 its misanthropy. ' ' Goethe. 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^^^W 
 
 " In ' Don Juan ' he pours forth a flood of cynical con- 
 tempt on the high-strung romantic and sentimental fancies 
 dear to that popular taste which he had himself done so 
 much to encourage." W. H. Courthope. 
 ^ " Byron wandered through the world, sad, gloomy, and un- 
 quiet ; wounded and bearing the arrow in his wound. .. . . 
 The emptiness of the life and death of solitary individuality 
 has never been so powerfully and efficaciously summed up as 
 in the pages of Byron." Mazzini. 
 
 " He veneered the true and noble self which gave life to 
 his poetry with a layer of imperfectly comprehended cynicism 
 and weak misanthropy, which passed with him for worldly 
 wisdom."^/. A. Symonds. 
 
 " [In speaking of ' Don Juan * j These are the words ojLa. 
 sceptic, even of a cynic it is in this he ends. Sceptic through 
 misanthropy, cynic through bravado, a sad and combative 
 humor always impels him. . . . You see clearly that he 
 
 tvMMHHMMMMaMMi^H^MHMMMMB^^^* 
 
 is always the same, in excess and unhappy, bent on destroy- 
 ing himself." Taine. 
 
392 BYRON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Oh man ! thou feeble tenant of an hour, 
 Debased by slavery, or corrupt by power, 
 Who knows thee well must quit thee with disgust, 
 Degraded mass of animated dust ! 
 Thy love is lust, thy friendship all a cheat, 
 Thy smiles hypocrisy, thy words deceit ! 
 By nature vile, ennobled but by name, 
 Each kindred brute might bid thee blush for shame. 
 Ye! who perchance behold this simple urn, 
 Pass on it honors none you wish to mourn : 
 To mark a friend's remains these stones arise ; 
 I never knew but one, and here he lies." 
 
 Epitaph on a Newfoundland Dog. 
 
 " I have not loved the world, nor the world me : 
 I have not flattered its rank breath, nor bowed 
 To its idolatries a patient knee 
 Nor coined my cheek to smiles, nor cried aloud 
 In worship of an echo ; in the crowd 
 They could not deem me one of such ; I stood 
 Among them but not of them ; in a shroud 
 Of thoughts which were not their thoughts, and still could, 
 Had I not filled my mind, which thus itself subdued." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 " Dogs or men ! for I flatter you in saying 
 That ye are dogs your betters far ye may 
 Read, or not read, what I am now essaying 
 To show ye what ye are in every way ; 
 As little as the moon stops for the baying 
 Of wolves, wiH the bright muse withdraw one ray 
 From out her skies there howl your idle wrath 
 The while she silvers o'er your gloomy path." 
 
 Don Juan. 
 
 3. Egotism Self- Revelation. ".No poet ever 
 stamped upon his writings a deeper impress of personality or 
 
BYRON 393 
 
 viewed outward objects in a manner more peculiar to himself. 
 Everything about him was intensely subjective, individual, 
 Byronic. . . . Self is ever uppermost in his mind. The 
 whole world is called upon to listen to the recital of the joys 
 and the agonies of George Gordon, Lord Byron. 
 He tells his thousands of readers that they are formed of more 
 vulgar clay than himself, that he despises them from his in- 
 most heart, that their life is passed in a bustling oscillation 
 between knavery and folly, and that all mankind is but a 
 degraded mass of animated dust. ... In whatever atti- 
 tude he places himself, he evidently intends it to be the one 
 which shall excite admiration or honor. ... He grad- 
 ually came to consider the world as made for him and uncon- 
 sciously to subordinate the interests and happiness of others 
 to his own. . . . We think that this egotism or selfish- 
 ness in Byron was the parent of most of his vices, inasmuch 
 as it emancipated his mind from the burden of those duties 
 which grow out of a man's relations with society." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 " He was himself the beginning, the middle, and the end 
 of his own poetry, the hero of every tale, the chief object in 
 every landscape. . . . There can be no doubt that this 
 remarkable man owed the vast influence which he exercised 
 over his contemporaries at least as much to his gloomy ego- 
 tism as to the real power of his poetry." Macaulay. 
 
 " Never, in the first flight of his thoughts, did he liberate 
 himself from himself. He dreams of himself and sees himself 
 throughout. . . . He meditated too much upon himself 
 to be enamored of anything else. . . . No such great 
 poet has had so narrow an imagination ; he would not meta- 
 morphose himself into another. They are his own sorrows, 
 his own revolts, rns own travels, which ... he intro- 
 duces into ms verses."^^^^. 
 
 " ' Je suis en moi VinfimJ exclaimed Byron, and this in- 
 finity of egotism left him in the end, like Napoleon, defeated 
 
394 BYRON 
 
 and defrauded, narrowed into the bounds of a small solitary 
 and sterile island in the great ocean of human existence or 
 would have left him so had not Greece summoned him and 
 Missolonghi set him free." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " He has treated hardly any subject but one himself; now 
 the man in Byron is a nature even less sincere than the poet. 
 This beautiful and blighted being is at bottom a coxcomb. 
 He posed all his life long." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " In Byron the Ego is revealed in all its pride of power, 
 freedom, and desire, in the uncontrolled plenitude of all its 
 faculties. The world around him neither rules nor tempts 
 him. The Byrpnian Ego aspires to rule it. ... _J3vron 
 stamps every object he portrays with his own individuality." 
 Mazzini. 
 
 " That diversity of character which dramatists represent 
 through fiction's personages, Byron assumed himself; and he 
 was either the villain, the enthusiast, the lover, or the jester, 
 according as the wantonness of his omnipotent genius sug- 
 gested. ... He has not left a scrap of writing upon 
 which he did not stamp an image of himself." Thomas 
 Moore. 
 
 " Childe Harold may not be, nor do we believe he is, 
 Lord Byron's very self, but he is Lord Byron's picture sketched 
 by Lord Byron himself." Walter Scott. 
 
 " He hangs the cloud, the film of his existence over all out- 
 ward things, sits in the centre of his thoughts, and enjoys 
 dark night, bright day, the glitter and the gloom, ' in cell 
 monastic.' ... In reading Lord Byron's works, he him- 
 self is never absent from one's mind." William Hazlitt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And now was Childe Harold sore sick at heart, 
 And from his fellow-bacchanals would flee ; 
 'Tis said at times the sullen tear would start, 
 But pride congealed the drop within his ee : 
 
BYRON 395 
 
 Apart he talked in joyous reverie, 
 And from his native land resolved to go 
 And visit scorching climes beyond the sea ; 
 With pleasure drugg'd, he almost longed for woe, 
 And e'en for change of scene would seek the shades below." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 11 Childe Harold had a mother not forgot, 
 Though parting from that mother he did shun ; 
 A sister whom he loved, but saw her not 
 Before his weary pilgrimage begun : 
 If friends he had, he bade adieu to none. 
 Yet deem not thence his breast a breast of steel. 
 Ye, who have known what 't is to dote upon 
 A few dear objects, will in sadness feel 
 Such partings break the heart they fondly hope to heal." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 " God help us all ! God help me too ! I am, 
 God knows, as helpless as the Devil can wish, 
 And not a whit more difficult to damn 
 Than is to bring to land a late-hooked fish 
 Or to the butcher to purvey the lamb ; 
 Not that I'm fit for such a noble dish 
 As one day will be that immortal fry 
 Of almost everybody born to die." 
 
 Vision tf Judgment. 
 
 4. Power of Invective. " He laid bare the cant of 
 English society and the corruption of the aristocracy, and 
 lashed them with a whip of scorpions. He illustrated and de- 
 nounced the social tyranny by which thousands were driven 
 into crime and prevented from returning to virtue. The ar- 
 rows of his scorn fell fast and thick among the defenders of 
 political abuses. The renegade, the hypocrite, the bigot, 
 were made to feel the full force of his merciless invective. 
 Wielding an uncontrolled dominion over language, and pro- 
 fusely gifted with all the weapons of sarcasm, hatred, and con- 
 tempt, he battled fiercely in the service of freedom, and knew 
 
396 BYRON 
 
 well how to overwhelm its adversaries with denunciations and 
 stormy threats, with ridicule and irony, which should eat into 
 their hearts as rust into iron." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " We trace an element of indignation in nearly all his sub- 
 sequent poems, which break too frequently into invectives 
 against unworthy or mistaken objects of his spleen. 
 If Byron desired fame, he achieved it in fair and full measure 
 in his satire. . . . Satire, which at the outset of Byron's 
 career crawled like a serpent, has here [in ' P Qn Juan '"j ac- 
 quired the wings and mailed panoply of a dragon." John 
 Adding ton Symonds. 
 
 11 All the Satanic qualities with which he is supposed to 
 have been endowed were called out of the depths of his heart 
 by this satire [' English Bards and Scotch Reviewers 'J cyni- 
 cism, irony, sarcasm, anger, hatred, and the thirst for ven- 
 geance. The immortal cripple, like Vulcan with his red-hot 
 hammer, ascended the English Olympus and spared none of 
 the statues of the gods." Emilio Castelar. 
 
 " How many well-regulated minds has he not lashed or 
 laughed into rage ! . . . The ' English Bards and Scotch 
 Reviewers ' could not fail to make a stir, consisting as it did 
 of a rolling fire of abuse against nearly all the most conspicu- 
 ous literary men of his time." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " May the strong curse of crushed affections light 
 Back on thy bosom with reflected blight ! 
 And make thee in thy leprosy of mind 
 As loathsome to thyself as to mankind ! 
 Till all thy self-thoughts curdle into hate, 
 Black as thy will for others would create : 
 Till thy hard heart be calcined into dust, 
 And thy soul welter in its hideous crust. 
 Oh, may thy grave be sleepless as the bed 
 The widowed couch of fire, that thou hast spread ! 
 
BYRON 397 
 
 Then, when thou fain would'st weary heaven with prayer, 
 Look on thy earthly victims and despair ! 
 Down to the dust ! and as thou rott'st away, 
 Even worms shall perish on thy poisonous clay." 
 
 A Sketch. 
 
 " Oh factious viper ! whose envenomed tooth 
 Would mangle still the dead, perverting truth ; 
 What though our ' nation's foes ' lament the fate, 
 With generous feeling, of the good and great : 
 Shall dastard tongues essay to blast the name 
 Of him whose meed exists in endless fame ? " 
 
 On the Death of Mr. Fox. 
 
 " There Clarke, still striving piteously * to please,' 
 Forgetting doggrel leads not to degrees, 
 A would-be satirist, a hired buffoon, 
 A monthly scribbler of some low lampoon, 
 Condemned to drudge, the meanest of the mean, 
 And furbish falsehoods for a magazine, 
 Devotes to scandal his congenial mind ; 
 Himself a living libel on mankind." 
 
 English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. 
 
 J;. Harsh Contrast Abruptness. " Pictures of 
 uty are painted with hues that are words, and speak to us 
 of heaven, only to be daubed with an impatient dash of the 
 same pencil that wrought their exceeding loveliness ; majestic 
 edifices are erected only to be overthrown ; statues full of life 
 and feeling are created only to be dashed petulantly to pieces. 
 Indeed, Byron experienced great delight in producing those 
 brisk shocks of surprise which come from yoking together the 
 mean and the exalted, the coarse and the tender. Some of 
 these do little credit to his heart, and, in fact, cast ominous 
 conjecture on the truthfulness of his feeling. . . . The 
 gloom of his meditation is laced with light in all directions. 
 Touches of pathos, tributes of affection . . . gleams of 
 
398 BYRON 
 
 beauty these all appear in company with a cynicism which 
 sneers at the object to which they appeal or a despair which 
 doubts their existence." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " But the author of it [' Don Juan '] has the unlucky gift 
 of personating all those lofty and sweet allusions, and that with 
 such grace and truth to nature that it is impossible not to sup- 
 pose, for the time, that he is among the most devoted of their 
 votaries till he casts off the character with a jerk, and the 
 moment after he has exalted us to the very height of our con- 
 ception, resumes his mocking at all things serious or sublime, 
 and lets us down at once on some coarse joke, hard-hearted 
 sarcasm, or fierce and relentless personality. . . . Thus, 
 in this manner, the sublime and terrific description of the 
 Shipwreck is strangely and disgustingly broken by traits of low 
 humor and buffoonery. . . . Thus all good feelings are 
 excited only to accustom us to their speedy and complete ex- 
 termination." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " At the most touching moment of Haidee's love, he vents 
 a buffoonery. He concludes an ode with caricatures. He is 
 Faust in the first verse and Mephistopheles in the second. He 
 employs in the midst of tenderness or of murder penny-print 
 witticisms, trivialities, gossip, with a pamphleteer's vilifica- 
 tion and a buffoon's whimsicalities. He lays bare poetic 
 method, asks himself where he has got to, counts the stanzas 
 already done, jokes the Muse, Pegasus, and the whole epic 
 stud as though he wouldn't give a two-pence for them."- 
 Taine. 
 
 " He is by turns a cenobite and an epicure, chaste and vol- 
 uptuous, sceptical and believing, a criminal and an apostle, an 
 enemy of humanity and a philanthropist, an angel and a de- 
 mon . ' ' Emilio Castelar. 
 
 11 His parody on the speech from Medea on the summit of 
 the Cyneans is a strong proof of the strange mixture of the 
 sublime and the ridiculous in his mind. . . . Vivacity, 
 gloom, tenderness, sarcasm, succeed each other too rapidly for 
 
BYRON 399 
 
 the current of ordinary feeling to follow them. We wonder 
 without sympathizing ; the very power of the artist leads us 
 to doubt the sincerity of the man." Thomas Moore. 
 
 " Its [* Don Juan's'] power is owing to the force of the seri- 
 ous writing and the contrast between that and the flashy pas- 
 sages with which it is interlarded. From the sublime to the 
 ridiculous there is but one step. ... A classical intoxi- 
 cation is followed by the splashing of soda-water, by frothy 
 effusions of ordinary bile." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Ii^ him the sublime and the ridiculous, the noble and the 
 mean, the sarcastic and the tender, the voluptuous and the 
 beautifully spiritual, the pious and the impious were all em- 
 bodied. . . . He was a many-sided monster showing 
 now sublime and now grotesque." W. M. Howitt. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And thus like to an angel o'er the dying 
 Who die in righteousness, she leaned ; and there 
 All tranquilly the shipwrecked boy was lying, 
 As o'er him lay the calm and stirless air. 
 But Zoe the meantime some eggs was frying ; 
 Since, after all, no doubt the youthful pair 
 Must breakfast, and betimes lest they should ask it, 
 She drew out her provision from the basket." 
 
 Don Juan. 
 
 " As he drew near, he gazed upon the gate 
 Ne'er to be entered more by him or Sin, 
 With such a glance of supernatural hate 
 As made Saint Peter wish himself within ; 
 He pattered with his keys at a great rate, 
 And sweated through his apostolic skin : 
 Of course, his perspiration was but ichor, 
 Or some such other spiritual liquor." 
 
 Vision of Judgment. 
 
400 BYRON 
 
 " He felt that chilling heaviness of heart, 
 Or rather stomach, which, alas ! attends, 
 Beyond the best apothecary's art, 
 The loss of love, the treachery of friends, 
 Or death for those we dote on, when a part 
 Of us dies with them as each fond hope ends ; 
 No doubt he would have been much more pathetic 
 But the sea acted as a strong emetic." Don Juan. 
 
 6y Grandeur Magnificence. " His work, beyond all 
 our other poets, recalls or suggests the wide and high things 
 in nature; the large likeness of the elements, the immeas- 
 urable liberty and the stormy strength of the waters and 
 winds. . . . To him the large motions and the beauties 
 of space were tangible and familiar as flowers." A. C. 
 Swinburne. 
 
 11 The fierce and far delight of the thunderstorm is here [in 
 ' Childe Harold '] described in verse almost as vivid as its 
 lightnings. The live thunder leaping among the rattling crags 
 the voice of mountains, as if shouting to each other the 
 plashing of the big rain the gleaming of the wide lake, 
 lighted like phosphoric sea present a picture ofsublime terror, 
 yet of enjoyment, often attempted but never so well, certainly 
 never better, brought out in poetry. ... In the very 
 grand and tremendous drama of ' Cain/ Lord Byron has 
 certainly matched Milton on his own ground." Sir Walter 
 Scott. 
 
 11 [' Of Childe Harold '] Declamation unfolds itself, pompous 
 and at times artificial, but potent and so often sublime that the 
 rhetorical dotings which he yet preserved disappear under the 
 afflux of splendor with which it is loaded. Wordsworth, Wal- 
 ter Scott, by the side of this prodigality of accumulated splen- 
 dors, seemed poor and gloomy." Taine. 
 
 " Never did the eternal spirit of the chainless mind make 
 a brighter apparition amongst us. He seems at times a trans- 
 formation of that immortal Prometheus, of whom he has written 
 
BYRON 401 
 
 so nobly, . . . whose grand and mysterious form, trans- 
 figured by time, reappears from age to age ... to wail 
 forth the lament of genius, tortured by the presentiment of 
 things it will not see realized in its time." Mazzini. 
 
 " His enjoyment of nature in her grander aspects and the 
 consolation he received from her amid the solitudes of the sea 
 and lake and mountain, are expressed with sublimity in the 
 passages upon the ocean and the June thunderstorm. ' ' -John 
 Addington Symonds. 
 
 " The sublime disorder of Byron's genius is like the grand 
 confusion of nature. . . . We must ascend to Jeremiah 
 to meet in universal literature a poet who, like him, could 
 send his voice from the tombs, repeat like him the elegy of 
 rain. He raised himself at one flight to the most sublime re- 
 gions of the spirit, in which all appeared to him expanded and 
 glor i fied . ' ' Emilio Caste lar. 
 
 " His soul was exalted by the broad and mighty aspects of 
 nature : for mosaic he was unfitted : a mountain, the sea, 
 a thunder-storm, a glorious woman, such imposing objects 
 aroused his noble rage." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "Its [Manfred's] obscurity is a Jgaft^ofjtsj^^dejir and 
 the clar'lFhess~that rests upon it and the smoky distance in 
 which it is lost are all devices to increase its majesty, to 
 stimulate our curiosity and impress us with a deeper awe." 
 Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Most glorious orb ! that wert a worship ere 
 The mystery of thy making was revealed ! 
 Thou earliest minister of the Almighty, 
 Which gladdened, on their mountain tops, the hearts 
 Of the Chaldean shepherds, till they poured 
 Themselves in orisons ! Thou material God ! 
 And representative of the Unknown 
 Who chose thee for His shadow ! 
 26 
 
402 BYRON 
 
 Thou chief star ! Centre of many stars ! which mak'st our earth 
 
 Endurable, and temperest the hues 
 
 And hearts of all who walk within thy rays ! 
 
 Sire of the seasons ! Monarch of the climes, 
 
 And those who dwell in them ! for near or far, 
 
 Our inborn spirits have a tint of thee 
 
 Even as our outward aspects ; thou dost rise 
 
 And shine and set in glory. Fare the well ! " Manfred. 
 
 " Oh, thou beautiful 
 
 And unimaginable ether ! and 
 
 Ye multiplying masses of increased 
 
 And still increasing lights ! What are ye ? What 
 
 Is this blue wilderness of interminable 
 
 Air, where ye roll along as I have seen 
 
 The leaves along the limpid streams of Eden ? 
 
 Is your course measured for ye ? Or do ye 
 
 Sweep on in your unbounded revelry 
 
 Through an aerial universe of endless 
 
 Expansion at which my soul aches to think 
 
 Intoxicated with Eternity? " Cain. 
 
 " Ye wilds, that look eternal ; and thou cave, 
 Which seem'st unfathomable ; and ye mountains, 
 So varied and so terrible in beauty ; 
 Here, in your rugged majesty of rocks 
 And toppling trees that twine their roots with stone 
 In perpendicular places, where the foot 
 Of man would tremble, could he reach them yes, 
 Ye look eternal ! " Heaven and Earth. 
 
 7- Depravity Profligacy. "The admirers of his 
 poetry appear sensible of some obligation to be the champions 
 of his conduct, while those who have diligently gathered to- 
 gether the details of an accurate knowledge of the unseemli- 
 ness of his conduct, cannot bear to think that from this bramble 
 men have been able to gather figs." John Morley. 
 
 "The recklessness with which he indulged in libertinism 
 
BYRON 403 
 
 was equalled only by the coolness with which he referred to it. 
 In a letter to Hodgson in 1810, he makes the candid confes- 
 sion that he has found ' that nothing but virtue will do in this 
 
 d d world. I am tolerably sick of vice, which I have 
 
 tried in all its disagreeable varieties, and mean, on my return, 
 to cut all my dissolute acquaintances and leave off wine and 
 carnal company and betake myself to politics and decorum.' 
 On his return to England he changed this amiable determina- 
 tion, so far as decorum was concerned, though he paid some 
 little attention to politics. He seemed determined to drain 
 the wine of life to the dregs and to excel in all the pleasant 
 methods of disposing of health, peace, and happiness which a 
 great metropolis affords. ... He appeared determined 
 to be excelled by none either in literature or licentiousness. 
 . . . He labors to make vice splendid. There are pas- 
 sages in his works which are not merely licentious in tendency 
 but openly obscene. . . . Some portions of his works, 
 for ribaldry and impurity, fairly bear off the palm from all 
 other dabblers in dirt and blasphemy. A person unacquainted 
 with the character of Byron would infer from these bold and 
 bad portions of his poems and letters that his soul was the seat 
 of obdurate malice. They seem to illustrate what Dr. Johnson 
 calls ' the frigid villany of studious lewdness, the calm malig- 
 nity of labored impurity.' They have none of that soft and 
 graceful voluptuousness with which poets usually gild and hu- 
 manize sensuality, and of which Byron himself was, when he 
 pleased, so consummate a master. The faults of his life blaze 
 out in his own verse and glitter on almost every page of his 
 correspondence. . . . He gradually lost all moral, fear. 
 Everything sacred in life, religion, affection, sentiment, duty, 
 virtue, he could as easily consider matter for mirth as for seri- 
 ous meditation. . . . His genius fed on poisons, and 
 they became nutriment to it. ... Byron casts the dra- 
 pery of the beautiful over things intrinsically mean and bad, 
 and renders them poetical to the eye. . . . If he took 
 
404- BYRON 
 
 pleasure in idealizing the bad, he received no less in degrad- 
 ing the ideal." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " He plunged into wild and desperate excesses, ennobled 
 by no generous and tender sentiment. From his Venetian 
 harem he sent forth volume after volume full of eloquence, 
 of wit, of pathos, of ribaldry, and of bitter disdain. "- 
 Macaulay. 
 
 " Byron's cry is, 'I am miserable because law exists; and I 
 have broken it, broken it so habitually that now I cannot 
 help breaking it. I have tried to eradicate the sense of it by 
 speculation, by action ; but I cannot.' The tree of knowl- 
 edge is not the tree of life. . . . That law exists let it 
 never be forgotten, is the real meaning of Byron, down in 
 that last terrible ' Don Juan,' in which he sits himself down 
 in artificial calm, to trace the gradual rotting and degradation 
 of a man without law, the slave of his own pleasures." 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 11 There is the varnish of voluptuousness on the surface of all 
 he touches. He, if ever man was, is a law unto himself a 
 chartered libertine. . . . Their [his poems] general ten- 
 dency we believe to be in the highest degree pernicious. 
 We think there are indecencies and indelicacies, 
 seductive descriptions and profligate representations, which 
 are extremely reprehensible. . . . Under some strange 
 misapprehension as to the truth and the duty of proclaiming 
 it, he has exerted all the powers of his powerful mind to con- 
 vince his readers, both directly and indirectly, that all enno- 
 bling pursuits and disinterested virtues are mere deceits or 
 illusions hollow and despicable mockeries for the most part, 
 and, at best, but laborious follies. Religion, love, patriotism, 
 valor, devotion, constancy all are to be laughed at, disbe- 
 lieved in, and despised ! and nothing is really good, so far 
 as we can gather, but a succession of dangers to stir the blood 
 and of banquets and intrigues to sooth it again ! . . . 
 The charge we bring against Lord Byron, in short, is, that 
 
BRYON 405 
 
 his writings have a tendency to destroy all belief in the reality 
 of virtue and to make all enthusiasm and constancy of affec- 
 tion ridiculous, and this by the constant exhibition of the 
 most profligate heartlessness in the persons who had been 
 transiently represented by the purest and most exalted emo- 
 tion." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " Southey, the poet laureate, said of him that he savored 
 of Moloch and Belial most of all Satan. . . . Several 
 times in Italy Lord Byron saw gentlemen leave a drawing- 
 room with their wives when he was announced. ... It 
 is here [in * Don Juan '] the diabolical poet digs in his sharpest 
 claw, and he takes care to dig it into your weakest side. 
 . . . You see clearly that he is always the same, in excess 
 and unhappy, bent on destroying himself, His * Don Juan ' 
 is also a debauchery ; in it he diverts himself outrageously at 
 the expense of all respectable things, as a bull in a china-shop. 
 He is often violent and often ferocious ; black imagination 
 brings into his stories horrors leisurely enjoyed. . . . Too 
 vigorous and hence unbridled that is the word which ever 
 recurs when we speak of Byron. . . . When a man jests 
 amidst his tears it is because he has a personal imagination." 
 Taine. 
 
 " Whenever he wrote a bad poem he supported his fame 
 by a signal act of profligacy ; an elegy by a seduction, a 
 heroic by an adultery, a tragedy, by a divorce." Walter 
 Lander. 
 
 " Byron's nature was in substance not that of the eu^vrfc at 
 all but rather of the barbarian." Thomas Arnold. 
 
 ' ' He cannot be called a moral poet. His collected works 
 are not of a kind to be recommended for family reading ; and 
 the poems in which his genius shines most clearly are precisely 
 those which lie open to the charge of licentiousness." John 
 Aldington Symonds. 
 
 " ' Childe Harold 1 is, I think, a very clever poem, but 
 gives no true symptoms of the writer's heart or morals. 
 
4O6 BYRON 
 
 . . . Vice ought to be a little more modest, and it must 
 require impudence almost equal to the noble lord's other 
 powers to claim sympathy gravely for the ennui arising from 
 his being tired of his assailers and his paramours." Sir Wal- 
 ter Scott. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Fill the goblet again ! for I never before 
 
 Felt the glow which now gladdens my heart to its core ; 
 
 Let us drink ! Who would not ? since, through life's varied 
 
 round, 
 
 In the goblet alone no deception is found. 
 I have tried, in its turn, all that life can supply ; 
 I have basked in the beam of a dark rolling eye ; 
 I have lov'd ! who has not ? but what heart can declare 
 That pleasure existed while passion was there ? 
 
 Long life to the grape ! for when summer is flown, 
 The age of our nectar shall gladden our own ; 
 We must die who shall not ? May our sins be forgiven. 
 And Hebe shall never be idle in Heaven." 
 
 Fill the Goblet Again. 
 
 11 Thus in the East they are extremely strict, 
 And wedlock and a padlock mean the same ; 
 Excepting only when the former's picked 
 It ne'er can be replaced in proper frame ; 
 Spoilt, as a pipe of claret is when pricked : 
 But then their own polygamy's to blame ; 
 Why don't they knead two virtuous souls for life 
 Into that moral centaur, man and wife ? " 
 
 Don Juan. 
 
 " Leads forth the ready dame, whose rising flush 
 Might once have been mistaken for a blush. 
 From where the garb just leaves the bosom free, 
 That spot where hearts were once supposed to be ; 
 
BYRON 407 
 
 Round all the confines of the yielded waist 
 
 The strangest hand may wander undisplaced ; 
 
 The lady's in return may grasp as much 
 
 As princely paunches offer to her touch. 
 
 Pleased, round the chalky floor how well they trip, 
 
 One hand reposing on the royal hip ; 
 
 The other to the shoulder no less royal 
 
 Ascending with affection truly loyal ! " The Waltz. 
 
 Thoughtful Beauty. " He never lost a keen per- 
 "ception of the pure and beautiful. . . . The passages of 
 thoughtful beauty which are scattered over his stormy and im- 
 pulsive poems following, as they so often do, fierce bursts of 
 passion and the bad idolatry of hatred and despair are as 
 pleasing to the eye as starlight after lightning. In the third 
 and fourth cantos of * Childe Harold,' in ' Don Juan,' in the 
 narratives and meditations which he has cast in a dramatic 
 form, passages might be selected of most witching liveliness, 
 of deep pathos, of sad and mournful beauty of sentiment, of 
 2tepi ration after truth and goodness of pity and charity and 
 faith and humanity and love." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Never has the genius of man inspired pages more beauti- 
 ful than those in which Lord Byron describes his travels in 
 Greece." Emilio C&stelar. 
 
 " His poems abound with sentiments of great dignity 
 and tenderness as well as passages of infinite sublimity and 
 beauty.' ' Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 < Childe Harold ' is one woven mas* ^f hpanty and in- 
 tellectual gold from end to end,;" W. M. Howitt. 
 
 " The beauty of ' Cain ' is such as we shall not see a sec- 
 ond time in the world." Goethe. 
 
 " Along with his astounding power and passion he had a 
 strong and deep sense for what was beautiful in nature and for 
 what was beautiful inhuman action and suffering." Matthew 
 Arnold. 
 
 " There was a strain in his poetry in which the sense pre- 
 
408 BYRON 
 
 dominated over the sound ; there was the eye keen to behold 
 nature and the pen powerful to trace her varied graces of 
 beauty or terror." Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Ye stars ! which are the poetry of heaven, 
 If in your bright leaves we would read the fate 
 Of men and empires 'tis to be forgiven, 
 That in our aspirations to be great 
 Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state, 
 And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are 
 A beauty and a mystery, and create 
 In us such love and reverence from afar 
 That fortune, fame, power, life, have named 
 Themselves a star." Childe Harold. 
 
 " Slow sinks, more lovely ere his race be run, 
 Along Morea's hills the setting sun ; 
 Not, as in Northern climes, obscurely bright, 
 But one unclouded blaze of living light ! 
 O'er the hushed deep the yellow beam he throws, 
 Gilds the green wave, that trembles as it glows." 
 
 The Corsair- 
 
 " The winds were pillowed on the waves ; 
 The banners drooped along their staves, 
 And, as they fell around them furling, 
 Above them shone the crescent curling ; 
 And that deep silence was unbroke, 
 Save where the watch his signal spoke, 
 Save where the steed neighed oft and shrill, 
 And echo answered from the hill, 
 And the wide hum of that wild host 
 Rustled like leaves from coast to coast, 
 As rose the Muezzin's voice in air 
 In midnight call to wonted prayer." 
 
 The Siege of Corinth. 
 
 9. Lofty Eloquence. " In his ' Childe Harold 'Jig 
 assumes a Infty ?r^ phiTosopfrjY t nn *- and ' reasnpy hjgh of 
 
BYRON 409 
 
 Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate.' . . . Lord 
 Byron has strength and elevation enough to filljip the .moulds 
 of our classical and time-hallowed recollections and to re- 
 kindle the earliest aspirations of the mind after greatness and 
 true glory with a pen of fire." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Filled with all these [Nature's] images of nobility and 
 greatness, he gave them back to his page with a tone so philo- 
 sophically profound, with a music so thrilling, with a dignity 
 so graceful and yet so tender, that nothing in poetry can be 
 conceived more fascinating and perfect." W. M. Hewitt. 
 
 " The matter with which he deals is gigantic, and he paints 
 with violent colors and sweeping pencil." John Morley. 
 
 " Feeling the un worthiness of his subject, he dazzles and 
 blinds the eye with a blaze of words." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Yet, Italy ! through every other land 
 
 Thy wrongs should ring, and shall, from side to side ; 
 Mother of Arts ! as once of arms ; thy hand 
 
 Was then our guardian, and is still our guide ; 
 Parent of our Religion ! whom the wide 
 
 Nations have knelt to for the keys of heaven ! 
 Europe, repentant of her parricide, 
 
 Shall yet redeem thee, and, all backward driven, 
 
 Roll the barbarian tide, and sue to be forgiven." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
 " Spirit of freedom ! when on Phyle's brow 
 
 Thou sat'st with Thrasybulus and his train, 
 Could'st thou forebode the dismal hour which now 
 
 Dims the green beauties of thine Attic plain ? 
 Not thirty tyrants now enforce the chain, 
 
 But every carle can lord it o'er thy land ; 
 Nor rise thy sons, but idly rail in vain, 
 
 Trembling beneath the scourge of Turkish hand, 
 
 From birth till death enslaved ; in word, in deed unmann'd." 
 
 Childe Harold. 
 
4IO BYRON 
 
 " Clime of the unforgotten brave ! 
 Whose land, from plain to mountain cave, 
 Was Freedom's home or Glory's grave ! 
 Shrine of the mighty ! can it be 
 That this is all remains of thee ? 
 Approach, thou craven crouching slave ; 
 Say, is not this Thermopylae ? 
 Those waters blue that round you lave, 
 Oh servile offspring of the free 
 Pronounce what sea, what shore is this ? 
 The gulf, the rock of Salamis ! 
 These scenes, their story not unknown, 
 Arise, and make again your own." The Giaour. 
 
Coleridge, 1772-1834 
 
 Biographical Outline Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born 
 October 21, 1772, at Ottery St. Mary; father vicar of the 
 town and master of the public grammar school, a man of un- 
 usual learning ; Coleridge is the youngest ef ten children ; he 
 is remarkably precocious and imaginative as a child, and says 
 of himself later, " I never thought as a child and never used 
 the language of a child ; " he reads the " Arabian Nights " 
 before he is five, and, on the death of his father, in 1781, ob- 
 tains, through Sir Francis Buller, a presentation to Christ's 
 Hospital, a school that he enters in July, 1782 ; here he 
 forms an intimate friendship wil.h Charles Lamb, which lasts 
 during Lamb's lifetime ; afterward, in his " Essays of Elia," 
 Lamb writes of Coleridge as "the inspired charity boy," who 
 expounded Plotinus, recited Homer in the Greek, and read 
 Virgil for pleasure ; before his fifteenth year Coleridge trans- 
 lates eight Greek hymns into English Anacreontics ; on re- 
 ceiving, by accident, a subscription to a loan library, he 
 " skulks out " of school and reads "right through the cata- 
 logue; " at first he proposes to become a physician, aids his 
 brother in hospital operations, and memorizes a whole Latin 
 medical dictionary ; before his fifteenth year he exchanges 
 medicine for metaphysics; Voltaire "seduces him into infi- 
 delity, out of which he was flogged by the head-master of 
 Christ's Hospital " a chastisement that Coleridge afterward 
 called "the only just flogging I ever received;" he is re- 
 called from metaphysics to poetry by falling in love with the 
 sister of a school-mate and by reading the sonnets of Bowles, 
 which he repeatedly transcribes as presents to his friends ; 
 while at Christ's Hospital he impairs his health by imprudent 
 
 411 
 
412 COLERIDGE 
 
 exposure and improper and scanty food, but, in spite of spend- 
 ing many months in the sick-ward, he rises to the head of the 
 school, which he leaves in September, 1790. 
 
 Having been appointed to an exhibition worth ^40 a 
 year at Jesus College, Cambridge, Coleridge begins residence 
 there as a sizar in October, 1791, and becomes a pensioner in 
 the following November ; in 1792 he wins a medal offered for 
 the best Greek ode ; as he is prevented from competing for 
 the highest honors of the university by his ignorance of math- 
 ematics, his reading becomes desultory, and he grows fond of 
 society, in which he shines as a conversationalist ; during 
 1793 he loses the favor of the college authorities through his 
 liberal political views, and becomes depressed by debt ; late 
 in 1793 he runs away from Cambridge and reaches London, 
 where he sells a poem to the Morning Chronicle for a guinea ; 
 soon afterward he publishes in the Chronicle a series of " Son- 
 nets on Eminent Characters; " then he enlists in the dra- 
 goons under the name of Comberback, and is sent to Reading 
 to be drilled with his regiment ; here he fails as a horseman, 
 but wins the favor of his comrades by writing their letters and 
 nursing them in the hospital ; an accident leads to his recog- 
 nition and discharge from the army in April, 1794 ; he writes 
 a penitent letter to his brothers, and through their aid he re- 
 turns, April 12, 1794, to Cambridge, where he is admonished 
 in the presence of the fellows; in June, 1794, while visiting 
 a friend at Oxford, he meets Southey ; soon afterward he 
 makes a pedestrian tour through North Wales, where he meets 
 his sweetheart, Mary Evans, at Wrexham ; this tour is after- 
 ward described by Coleridge and his companion in a small 
 volume ; returning by way of Bristol, he again meets Southey 
 there, and on short acquaintance he becomes engaged to Sara 
 Fricker, daughter of a Bristol tradesman, to whose sister 
 Southey was already engaged ; while at Bristol Coleridge joins 
 with Southey and others in developing a socialistic scheme 
 called by them " Pantisocracy ; " they were to marry, emi- 
 
)LERIDGE 413 
 
 grate to the banks of the Susquehanna, and establish there a 
 modern Utopia ; about this time Coleridge collaborates with 
 Southey in writing "The Fall of Robespierre," which was 
 published as the work of Coleridge in 1794. 
 
 Coleridge leaves Cambridge without a degree late in 1794, 
 and first visits London, where he renews his association with 
 Lamb ; Southey recalls him to his fiancee at Bristol, where 
 Coleridge meets Joseph Cottle, a young bookseller, who lends 
 hirn money to pay for his lodgings and those of the other 
 " Pantisocratians " at 48 College Street; Cottle also offers 
 Coleridge thirty guineas for a volume of poems ; during the 
 following six months Coleridge increases his income some- 
 what by giving at least eighteen public lectures, mainly on 
 political subjects ; although the volume of poems is not com- 
 pleted, Cottle offers him one and one-half guineas for every 
 hundred lines written after the completion of the volume ; 
 with this assurance of support, the poet promptly marries 
 SaraFricker, on October 4, 1795, ten days before the marriage 
 of her sister to Southey ; the Coleridges settle at once at a 
 small one-story cottage at Clevedon, and Southey leaves his 
 bride for a voyage to Portugal, whence he writes to Coleridge 
 that the scheme of " Pantisocracy "must be abandoned. 
 
 Coleridge's first volume of poems, including three sonnets 
 by Lamb, is published by Cottle at Bristol in April, 1796 ; 
 he now proposes to establish a new journal, and makes a tour 
 of Northern England in search of subscribers ; he secures over 
 a thousand subscribers, establishes The Watchman, an eight- 
 day paper, issues just five editions, and then abandons the 
 venture on the ground that it does not pay expenses ; mean- 
 time Coleridge has become an occasional preacher at Unitarian 
 chapels, and considers seriously the idea of becoming a regu- 
 lar minister of that sect ; while at Birmingham, during his 
 tour in search for subscribers, he had met a young banker, 
 Charles Lloyd, who was so fascinated by Coleridge's conver- 
 sation that he gave up his business, and soon afterward came 
 
414 COLERIDGE 
 
 to Bristol to live with the poet and to contribute largely to his 
 support; in the winter of 1796-97 Coleridge and Lloyd re- 
 move to a small house at Nether Stowey, near Bridge water, 
 where Coleridge's friend, Thomas Poole, raises a subscription 
 sufficient to provide the poet with a small annuity ; 3 second 
 edition of Coleridge's poems, with some by Lloyd and Lamb, 
 appears in 1797 ; Lamb and his sister visit Coleridge at 
 Nether Stowey in June, 1797, and soon afterward Wordsworth 
 settles at Alfoxden, near Nether Stowey, in order to be near 
 Coleridge ; while at Nether Stosrey Coleridge writes "Osorio," 
 afterward called " Remorse," and refuses thirty guineas offered 
 by Cottle for the drama because Coleridge hepes to have it 
 produced on the stage, but Sheridan ignores it ; during 1797 
 and 1798 Wordsworth and Coleridge collaborate in writing 
 the " Lyrical Ballads," which are published in September, 
 1798; Coleridge's principal contribution to the volume was 
 "The Ancient Mariner," to which Wordsworth contributed 
 a few lines ; during 1797 Coleridge also writes the first parts 
 of " Christabel " and " Kubla Khan," although these poems 
 were not published till eighteen years afterward ; the volume 
 '"'Lyrical Ballads" was a financial failure, and when Cottle 
 sold out to the Longmans, a little later, the copyright was 
 listed as having no value ; Lloyd leaves Coleridge during 
 1798, and the poet renews, for a time, his former practice of 
 preaching in Unitarian pulpits ; about this time his friend 
 Josiah Wedgwood offers Coleridge an annuity of ^150 on 
 condition that he will decline a proffered pastorship at Shrews- 
 bury and devote himself henceforth to philosophy ; after some 
 hesitation Coleridge accepts the offer, and thereupon severs his 
 connection with the Unitarian body. 
 
 In September, 1798, he starts for Germany with Words- 
 worth and Wordsworth's sister, Coleridge's expenses being 
 borne by Wedgwood ; the poets visit Klopstock at Ham- 
 burg, and when the Wordsworths go to Goslar, Coleridge set- 
 tles at Ratzeburg, where he studies German diligently with a 
 
COLERIDGE 415 
 
 Protestant pastor ; in January, 1799, he goes to the University 
 of Gottingen, where he " indulges freely in his perennial pas- 
 time of disquisition; " in May, 1799, he makes a walking 
 tour through the Hartz Mountains and writes " Lines on 
 Ascending the Brocken ; " he returns to England in June, 
 1799, visits Nether Stowey and the Lake country, and then 
 shuts himself up in London for six weeks while he makes his 
 masterly translation of Schiller's " Wallenstein," which is pub- 
 lished in 1800 ; Coleridge had already contributed occasion- 
 ally to the Morning Chronicle, and late in 1799, on the 
 recommendation of Mackintosh, he is engaged at a guinea a 
 week as a regular writer for the then newly established Morn- 
 ing Post ; his most successful contribution to the Post is " The 
 Devil's Thoughts," of which a part was written by Southey ; 
 Coleridge afterward declared that he had declined an offer 
 of a half interest in the Post and in the Courier, together 
 worth ^2,000 a year, saying to the owner, "I would not 
 give up the country and the lazy reading of old books for two 
 thousand times ,2,000 ; in short, beyond 350 a year I con- 
 sider money a real evil ; " but this statement was perhaps one 
 of the exaggerations due to the poet's indulgence in opium. 
 
 In July, 1800, Coleridge removes, with his family, to Greta 
 Hall, Keswick, where Southey occupies another part of the 
 same house from 1803 to 1809 > at Keswick, in 1800, he 
 writes the second part of " Christabel " and in 1802 his 
 " Ode to Dejection," in which he bemoans the decline of 
 his imaginative powers; as early as 1796 he had begun to 
 resort to laudanum for relief from rheumatic and neuralgic 
 pains, and he had written the first part of " Kubla Khan " 
 under the influence of the drug ; in 1800 he writes of taking 
 opium for "the pleasurable sensations," and by 1803 he has 
 become a confirmed opium-eater ; for several years prior to 
 1814 he takes regularly two quarts of laudanum a week, and 
 during one week he records taking a quart in twenty-four 
 hours; because of the influence of the drug his statements 
 
416 COLERIDGE 
 
 about himself at this period are quite untrustworthy ; his nat- 
 ural lack of business ability is intensified, he becomes gradu- 
 ally estranged from his wife, and he leaves his family to be 
 provided for by Southey ; he visits Wales with Thomas Wedg- 
 wood in 1802 and Scotland with the Wordsworths in 1803. 
 
 In April, 1804, having received a loan of ^100 from 
 Wordsworth and another 100 from his brothers, he sails for 
 Malta, and there acts, for several months, as secretary to the 
 governor of the island, Sir Alexander Ball ; he leaves Malta 
 in September, 1805, visits Sicily and Naples, spends some 
 months in Rome, and then leaves suddenly for England on 
 being informed by the Prussian minister that Napoleon has 
 "marked" him because of certain articles previously pub- 
 lished by Coleridge and reflecting on the French emperor ; 
 Coleridge's vessel is said to have been pursued by a French 
 frigate, and he is said to have thrown overboard his papers, 
 including data gathered during his studies in Rome ; he 
 reaches England in August, 1806, "ill, penniless, and worse 
 than homeless ; " he visits Wordsworth and other friends, and 
 first meets De Quincey at Bridgewater in 1807 ; De Quincey 
 makes him a gift of ^300 ; Coleridge is given a lodging at 
 the Courier office in London, and, in the spring of 1808, he 
 earns ^100 by lecturing at the Royal Institution ; later in 
 the same year he settles at Grasmere as a member of Words- 
 worth's family, and establishes The Friend, a journal that 
 exists till March, 1810; then for a time Coleridge lives with 
 Basil Montagu in London ; then he lodges with his old friend 
 John Morgan, of Bristol, most of the time till 1816, though 
 he seems to have been a kind of literary tramp during this 
 period ; his lectures on Shakespeare in 1810-11 excited much 
 interest, and were attended by such writers as Byron and 
 Rogers; from 1812 to 1818 he contributes occasionally to 
 the Courier ; his neglect of literary endeavor because of 
 opium-eating becomes finally so complete that his pension 
 from the Wedgwoods is withdrawn; in 1824 he becomes one 
 
COLERIDGE 417 
 
 often " royal associates," who receive from George IV. a 
 pension of^iooeach till the death of that monarch; De 
 Quincey and other friends contribute to Coleridge's support, 
 and Byron induces the Drury Lane committee to produce 
 11 Remorse," which has a run of twenty nights, and brings a 
 good financial return to Coleridge ; from 1813 to 1816 he 
 is so completely under the influence of opium as to lose the 
 respect of most of his friends, although he completes his 
 " Biographia Literaria " by 1815. 
 
 In April, 1815, Coleridge is received, on the appeal of his 
 physician, as a guest in the home of Mr. Oilman, of High- 
 gate, near London, and here he remains, with slight excep- 
 tions, till his death, meanwhile making a heroic and partially 
 successful endeavor to discard the use of opium ; at Byron's 
 request for a tragedy Coleridge writes "Zapolya," which is 
 rejected by the theatres, but is published by Murray in 1817 
 as a "Christmas Tale;" meantime, in 1816, Murray has 
 published " Christabel " with " Kubla Khan " and "The 
 Pains of Sleep ; " three editions of this volume were sold in a 
 year; in 1816 and 1817 are published two of Coleridge's 
 "Lay Sermons," and in 1817 a collection of his poems 
 called " Sibylline Leaves " and the " Biographia Literaria; " 
 Coleridge gives his last series of public lectures in London in 
 the winter of 1818-19 to " crowded and sympathetic audi- 
 ences ; " in 1820 appears his " Essay on Church and State," 
 and in 1825 his "Aids to Reflection; " meantime he has 
 become famous, and during his later years he is visited by 
 many young writers, including Emerson, and is regarded as 
 almost an oracle; most of the time after 1822 he is confined 
 to his room and his bed, but in 1828 he travels up the Rhine 
 with the Wordsworths, and in 1833 he visits Cambridge; he 
 dies at Highgate, London, July 25, 1834. 
 
 27 
 
418 COLERIDGE 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON COLERIDGE. 
 
 Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 
 
 Co., 10-16. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, " Life of John Sterling." London, 1852, Chapman & 
 
 Hall, 69-80. 
 
 De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, 2: 138-225. 
 Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Smith, Elder 
 
 & Co., 339-368. 
 
 Hazlitt, Wm., " The Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, Bell, 43-48 
 Traill, H. D., " English Men of Letters." New York, 1889, Macmil- 
 
 lan, v. index. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 
 
 Fields, 299-334. 
 Shairp, J. S. C., "Studies in Poetry and Philosophy." Boston, 1889, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 133-203. 
 
 Pater, W., "Appreciations." London, 1890, Macmillan, 65-106. 
 Stedman, E. C., "The Nature of Poetry." Boston, 1893, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin & Co., 147-185. 
 Swinburne, A. C., "Essays and Studies" London, 1875, Chatto & 
 
 Windus, 259-275. 
 Lowell, J. R., " Democracy and Other Addresses." Boston, 1887, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 91-103. 
 Rossetti, W. M., " Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 
 
 237-255. 
 Bayne, P., " Essays in Biography and Criticism." Boston, 1858, Gould 
 
 & Lincoln, 108-148. 
 Child, F. J., " British Poets." Boston, n. d., Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 v. index. 
 Caine, H., " Coleridge " (Great Writer Series). London, 1887, Walter 
 
 Scott, v. index. 
 Reed, H., "British Poets." Philadelphia, 1857, Parry & Macmillan, 
 
 88-126. 
 Gilfillan, G., "Third Gallery of Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1854, 
 
 James Hogg, 215-226. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "The Literary History of England," etc. London, 
 
 1889, Macmillan, I : 243-283. 
 Cottle, J., " Reminiscences of S. T. Coleridge." London, 1848, Houl- 
 
 ston & Stonman, v. index. 
 
 Gillman, " Life of S. T. Coleridge." London, 1838, Pickering, v. index. 
 Mason, E. T., " Personal Traits of British Authors." New York, 1885, 
 
 Scribner, 2 : 57-109. 
 
COLERIDGE 419 
 
 Allsop, T., " Letters, Conversations, and Recollections of S. T. Cole- 
 ridge." London, 1858, Groombridge, v. index. 
 
 Brandt, A., "Coleridge and the Romantic School." London, 1887, 
 Murray, v. index. 
 
 Woodberry, G. E., " Studies in Literature." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., 188-209. 
 
 Foster, J., "Critical Essays." London, 1877, Bell, 2 : 1-24. 
 
 Ward, T. H., "English Poets" (Pater). London, 1881, Macmillan, 
 102-114. 
 
 Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." London, 1874, H. 
 S. King, 69-93. 
 
 Chorley, H. T., "Authors of England." London, 1888, C. Tilt, 
 
 37-43- 
 
 Mitford, M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 1851, 
 Harper, 386-398. 
 
 Courthope, W. J., "The Liberal Movement in English Literature." 
 London, 1885, Murray, 159-197. 
 
 Martineau, J., "Essays, Philosophical and Theological. " Boston, 1866, 
 W. N. Spencer, 329-406. 
 
 Wilson, Prof. J., " Noctes Ambrosiana" Edinburgh, 1856, Black- 
 wood, vols. I and 2, v. index. 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 45 : 483-498 (G. P. Lathrop). 
 
 Bibliotheca Sacra, 4: 117-171 (Noah Porter). 
 
 Black-wood's Magazine, 57: 117-132 (De Quincey). 
 
 Contemporary Review, 67 : 876-887 (Andrew Lang) ; 67 : 548-569 (J. 
 Wedgwood). 
 
 Critic, 6 : 249-250 (J. R. Lowell). 
 
 Edinburgh Review, 28: 488-515 (W. Hazlitt). 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 43 : 11-25 (J- Tulloch) ; 52 : 342-366 (E. Dowden). 
 
 North American Review, 40: 299-351 (G. B. Cheever). 
 
 National Review, 5 : 504-518 (J. Martineau). 
 
 Westminster Review, 33: 257-302 (J. S. Mill). 
 
 National Review, 25 : 318-327 (L. Stephen). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 A/I. Miltonic Eloquence Sublimity. "A sublime 
 man who, alone in those dark days, had saved his crown of 
 spiritual manhood, escaping from the black materialisms and 
 revolutionary deluges with ' God, freedom, and immortality ' 
 still his ; a king of men." Carlyle. 
 
42O COLERIDGE 
 
 " The majestic rush and roar of that irregular anapaestic 
 measure, used once or twice by this supreme master of them 
 all, no student can follow without an exultation of enjoyment. 
 The ' Hymn to the Earth ' has a sonorous and oceanic 
 strength of harmony, a grace and glory of life, that fill the 
 sense with a vigorous delight." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " His genius at that time [1798] had angelic wings and fed 
 on manna. . . . His thoughts did not seem to come 
 with labor and effort but as if borne on the gusts of genius 
 and as if the wings of imagination lifted him from off his 
 feet. . . . His voice rolled on the ear like the pealing 
 organ, and its song alone was the music of thought. His 
 mind was clothed with wings, and, raised on them, he lifted 
 philosophy to heaven." William Hazlitt. 
 
 "He -has gone about in the true spirit of an old Greek 
 bard, with a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance to 
 the divine spirit within him. . . . There is nothing 
 more wonderful than the facile majesty of his images or rather 
 of his world of- imagery, which, whether in his poetry or his 
 prose, starts up before us self-raised and all-perfect, like the 
 palace of Aladdin. He ascends the sublimest truths by a 
 winding track of sparkling glory." T. N. Talfourd. 
 
 " Nature moved Coleridge to eloquence, rhapsody, and 
 worship as an artist to imaginative mysticism." E. C. 
 Stedman. 
 
 " In divine things Coleridge's poetry takes on a Miltonic 
 majesty of diction and a Miltonic stateliness of rhyme. It is 
 as if some sweet and solemn strain of organ music had suc- 
 ceeded to the blast of the war-bugles and the roll of drums." 
 H. &. Traill. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Hast thou a charm to stay the morning-star 
 In his steep course ? So long he seems to pause 
 On thy bald awful head, O sovran Blanc ! 
 The Arve and Arveiron at thy base 
 
COLERIDGE 42 1 
 
 Rave ceaselessly ; but thou, most awful Form ! 
 Risest from forth thy silent sea of pines, 
 How silently ! Around thee and above 
 Deep is the air and dark, substantial, black, 
 An ebon mass : methinks thou piercest it 
 As with a wedge ! But when I look again, 
 It is thine own calm home, thy crystal shrine, 
 Thy habitation from eternity ! 
 
 dread and silent Mount ! I gazed upon thee, 
 Till thou, still present to the bodily sense, 
 
 Didst vanish from my thought : entranced in prayer 
 
 1 worshipped the Invisible alone." 
 
 Hymn in the Vale of Chamouni. 
 
 " Ye Clouds ! that far above me float and pause, 
 Whose pathless march no mortal can control ! 
 Ye Ocean- waves ! that, wheresoe'er ye roll, 
 Yield homage only to eternal laws ! 
 Ye woods ! that listen to the night-bird's singing, 
 O ye loud waves ! and O ye Forests high ! 
 And O ye clouds that far above me soar'd ! 
 Thou rising sun ! thou blue rejoicing sky ! 
 Yea, everything that is, and will be free ! 
 Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be, 
 With what deep worship I have still adored 
 The spirit of divinest liberty." The Destiny of Nations. 
 
 " O Spirit blest ! 
 
 Whether the Eternal's throne around, 
 Amidst the blaze of Seraphim, 
 Thou pourest forth the grateful hymn, 
 Or soaring through the blest domain 
 Enrapturest angels with thy strain, 
 Grant me, like thee, the lyre to sound, 
 Like thee with fire divine to glow ; 
 But ah ! when rage the waves of woe, 
 Grant me with firmer breast to meet their hate 
 And soar beyond the storm with upright eyes elate ! " 
 On the Death of Chatter ton. 
 
COLERIDGE 
 
 2. Realistic Supernaturalism. ' < Coleridge has been 
 peculiarly successful in reducing to the fetters of time and 
 place certain things in their nature evanescent. There are 
 certain moods, lasting but a little while, which cannot be ex- 
 plained by any patent mental philosophy that I am aware of. 
 . . . In reading ' Kubla Khan ' we seem rapt into that 
 paradise revealed to Swedenborg, where music and color and 
 perfume were one, where you could hear the hues and see the 
 harmonies of heaven." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 11 His theology of nature went through two phases. The 
 first, in his world-going period, is very fantastic. There are 
 multitudes of spirits, he conceived, belonging to the service of 
 God ; some contemplating spirits, who gazed forever on the 
 front of Deity; some in whose hands lay the guidance and fate 
 of nations, but others who were the forming spirits of creation, 
 by whose operation all nature grew and made itself and died and 
 was born again. . . . Nature, therefore, in all its myriad 
 forms, is ever alive in God. . . . He [Coleridge] changes 
 afterward to the idea that it is that of God in us that makes 
 nature to us. The existence of the outward world is only phe- 
 nomenal, not actual. We have given us the forms of things in 
 thought ; and, thinking these, we see, hear, and feel them, and 
 build up the world of nature for ourselves." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Wordsworth gives us a series of realistic themes ; Cole- 
 ridge gives us supernatural incident possessed with the reality 
 of human interest. Pater speaks of this characteristic as ro- 
 mantic weirdness ; the imaginative apprehension of the silent 
 and unseen processes of nature.' " Hall Came. 
 
 " For his poetry, his philosophical criticism, and the tradi- 
 tion of his conversation, Coleridge will probably be most 
 esteemed by posterity. As a poet, we think that his genius is 
 displayed with the most wonderful effect in ' Christabel,' and 
 'The Ancient Mariner.' In these the mystical element of 
 human nature has its finest poetical embodiment. They act 
 upon the mind with a weird-like influence, searching out the 
 
COLERIDGE 423 
 
 most obscure recesses of the soul and making mysterious emo- 
 tions in the very centre of our being and then sending them to 
 glide and tingle along every nerve and vein with the effect of 
 enchantment. It is as if we were possessed with a subtle insan- 
 ity or had stolen a glance into the occult secrets of the universe. 
 All our customary impressions of things are shaken by the in- 
 trusion of an indefinite sense of fear and amazement into the 
 soul. . . . He could likewise stir that supernatural fear 
 in the heart which he has so powerfully expressed in one stanza 
 of ' The Ancient Mariner' a fear from which no person, poet 
 or prosaist, has ever been entirely free, and which makes the 
 blood of the pleasantest atheist at times turn cold and his phi- 
 losophy slide away under his feet." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "He who has seen a mouldering tower by the side of a 
 crystal lake, hid by the mist but glittering in the wave below, 
 may conceive the dim, glimmering, uncertain intelligence of 
 his eye ; he who has marked the evening clouds uprolled (a 
 world of vapors) has seen the picture of his mind, unearthly, 
 unsubstantial, with gorgeous tints and ever varying forms." 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 " In ' Christabel ' the human and the supernatural elements 
 interpenetrate each other more completely and more subtly 
 than in The Ancient Mariner. ' The presence of higher than 
 mortal powers for evil and for good is everywhere felt, yet 
 nowhere is it thrust forward. . . . Although . . . 
 we are aware of the ghostly presence of the maiden's mother, 
 we never see the phantom. . . . But Coleridge has else- 
 where created a visible ghost, a ghost which appears under the 
 strangest circumstances, a ghost itself so strange that Coleridge 
 may be said to have invented a new spiritual fear. 
 Here again in the ' Wanderings of Cain ' loveliness and terror 
 are allied. " Edward Dow den. 
 
 "The world ... in which the strange history of 
 ' The Ancient Mariner ' was transacted . . . is a world 
 in which both animated things and brooks and clouds and 
 
424 COLERIDGE 
 
 plants are moved by spiritual agency ; in which, as he would 
 put it, the veil of the senses is nothing but a symbolism, 
 everywhere telling of unseen and supernatural forces. What 
 we call the solid and the substantial becomes a dream ; and 
 the dream is the true underlying reality." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " It is the delicacy, the dreamy grace, in his presentation 
 of the marvellous, which makes Coleridge's work so remark- 
 able. . . . Coleridge's power is in the very fineness with 
 which, as by some really ghostly finger, he brings home to our 
 inmost sense his inventions, daring as they are. . . . 
 ' The Rime of the Ancient Mariner ' has the plausibility, the 
 perfect adaptation to reason, and the general aspect of life, 
 which belong to the marvellous, when actually presented as 
 part of a credible experience in our dreams." Walter Pater. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The western wave was all aflame, 
 The day was well-nigh done ! 
 Almost upon the western wave 
 Rested the broad bright sun ; 
 When that strange shape drove suddenly 
 Betwixt us and the sun. 
 
 And straight the sun was flecked with bars, 
 (Heaven's mother show us grace ! ) 
 As if through a dungeon gate he peered 
 With broad and burning face. 
 
 Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) 
 How fast she nears and nears ! 
 Are those her sails that glance in the sun 
 Like restless gossameres ? 
 
 Are those her ribs through which the sun 
 Did peer, as through a grate ? 
 And is that woman all her crew ? 
 Is that a Death ? and are there two ? 
 Is Death that woman's mate ? " 
 
 Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
 
COLERIDGE 425 
 
 "The maid, devoid of guile and sin, 
 I know not how, in fearful wise 
 So deeply had she drunken in 
 That look, those shrunken serpent eyes, 
 That all the features were resigned 
 To this sole image of her mind ; 
 And passively did imitate 
 That look of dull and treacherous hate, 
 And thus she stood in dizzy trance, 
 Still picturing that look askance 
 With forced unconscious sympathy 
 Full before her father's v\evf."Christabel. 
 
 " From his obscure haunt 
 Shrieked Fear, of Cruelty the ghastly dam, 
 Feverous yet freezing, eager-paced yet slow, 
 As she that creeps forth from her swampy reeds, 
 Ague, the biform hag ! when early Spring 
 Beams on the marsh-bred vapours." 
 
 The Destiny of Nations. 
 
 Musical Versification. " For absolute melody and 
 splendor it were hardly rash to call it [' Kubla Khan '] the 
 first poem in the language. An exquisite instinct married to 
 a subtle science of verse has made it the supreme model of 
 music in our language. . . . Shelley, indeed, conies 
 nearest ; but for purity and volume of music Shelley is to 
 Coleridge as a lark to a nightingale ; his song is heaven high 
 and clear as heaven, but the other's is more rich and weighty, 
 more passionately various and warmer in the effusion of 
 sound. . . . His ' subtle sway and masterdom ' of music 
 could make sweet and strong even the feeble and tuneless form 
 of metre called hexameter in English. . . . All the ele- 
 ments that compose the perfect form of English metre, as limbs 
 and veins and features a beautiful body of man, were more 
 familiar, more subject, as it were, to this great poet than to 
 any other. How, for instance, no less than rhyme, assonance 
 and alliteration are forces, requisite components of high and 
 
426 COLERIDGE 
 
 ample harmony, witness once for all the divine passage which 
 begins ' Five miles meandering with a mazy motion.' . . . 
 Gycine's song flashes out like a visible sunbeam : it is one of 
 the brightest bits of music ever done in words." A. C. Swin- 
 burne. 
 
 i( Coleridge has taken the old ballad measure and given it, 
 by an indefinable charm wholly his own, all the sweetness, all 
 the melody and compass of a symphony. . . . The words 
 seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the 
 choice, variety, and position of the vowel sounds, they be- 
 come magical. The most decrepit vocable in the language 
 throws away its crutches to dance and sing at his piping." 
 Lowell. 
 
 In his * France ' . . . freedom in artistic handling 
 is at one with obedience to artistic law. Mr. Theodore Watts 
 . . . has called attention to what he describes as its fluid- 
 ity of metrical movement. ' The more billowy the metrical 
 waves,' he says, * the better suited they are to render the emo- 
 tions expressed by the ode ; ' and he points out how in the 
 opening stanza of ' France ' the first metrical wave, after it 
 has gently fallen at the end of the first quatrain, leaps up again 
 on the double rhymes and goes bounding on, billow after bil- 
 low, to the end of the stanza. The mastery of a prolonged 
 period in lyrical poetry is rare even with great writers." 
 Edward Dow den. 
 
 " For exquisite music of metrical movement and for im- 
 aginative phantasy . . . there is nothing in our lan- 
 guage to be compared with ' Christabel ' and ' Kubla Khan ' 
 and with the ' Rime of the Ancient Mariner.' ' Stopford 
 Brooke. 
 
 " It [' The Ancient Mariner '] has that rich, varied move- 
 ment in the verse which gives a distinct idea of the lofty 
 or changeful tones of Mr. Coleridge's voice." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 " The Coleridge of the imaginative, haunting melody and 
 
COLERIDGE 427 
 
 sovereign judgment unparalleled in his time." E. C. Sted- 
 man. 
 
 11 The harmony and variety of Coleridge's versification, his 
 exquisite delineations of the heart, his command of imagery, 
 his ' wide-wandering magnificence of imagination,' have so 
 often been the theme of admiring comment that they need not 
 be dwelt on here." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " The last of these [' Tears in Solitude '] opens and closes 
 with some of his best blank verses, full of lambent light and his 
 own exquisite music ; the language so simple yet 
 
 so aerially musical, the rhythm so original yet so fitted to the 
 story [of < Christabel ']."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 " Coleridge is, in fact, the great musician of the romantic 
 school of English poetry. His practice is the exact antithesis 
 of Wordsworth's theory that there is no essential difference be- 
 tween the language of poetry and that of prose. In him met- 
 rical movement was all in all. He was the first to depart from 
 the lofty iambic movement which had satisfied the feeling of 
 the eighteenth century and, by associating picturesque images 
 and antique phrases in melodious and pleasing metre, to set 
 the imagination free in a world quite removed from actual 
 experience." W. J. Courthope. 
 
 11 ' Kubla Khan ' is an ecstasy of sound." William Jtos- 
 setti. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The night is chill ; the forest bare ; 
 Is it the wind that moaneth bleak ? 
 There is not wind enough in the air 
 To move away the ringlet curl 
 From the lovely lady's cheek 
 There is not wind enough to twirl 
 The one red leaf, the last of its clan, 
 That dances as often as dance it can, 
 Hanging so light, and hanging so high, 
 On the topmost twig that looks up at the sky." 
 
 Christabel. 
 
428 COLERIDGE 
 
 " The little cloud it floats away, 
 Away it goes ; away so soon ? 
 Alas ! it has no power to stay : 
 Its hues are dim, its hues are gray 
 Away it passes from the moon ! 
 How mournfully it seems to fly, 
 Ever fading more and more, 
 To joyless regions of the sky 
 And now 'tis whiter than before ! " Lewii. 
 
 " A little child, a limber elf, 
 Singing, dancing to itself 
 A fairy thing with red round cheeks 
 That always finds and never seeks 
 Makes such a vision to the sight 
 As fills a father's eyes with light." Christabel. 
 
 \ 4. Picturesqueness. " It is in a highly sensitive ap- 
 prehension of the aspects of external nature that Coleridge 
 identifies himself most closely with one of the main tendencies 
 of the Lake School. ... A characteristic watchfulness 
 for the minute fact and expression of natural scenery pervades 
 all he writes a closeness to the exact physiognomy of nat- 
 ure. . . . This induces in him no indifference to actual 
 color and form and process but such minute realism as this 
 
 ' The thin grey cloud is spread on high, 
 It covers but not hides the sky. 
 The moon is behind and at the full ; 
 And yet she looks both small and dull.' " 
 
 Walter Pater. 
 
 " And how picturesque it [' The Ancient Mariner '] is in 
 the proper sense of the word ! I know nothing like it. There 
 is not a description in it. It is all picture. Descriptive poets 
 generally confuse us through multiplicity of detail ; we cannot 
 see their forest for the trees : but Coleridge never errs in this 
 way. With instinctive tact he touches the right chord of as- 
 sociation and is satisfied, as we also are." Lowell* 
 
COLERIDGE 429 
 
 " If we would find a poetical rendering of the landscape of 
 Quantocks, with its unambitious loveliness of coomb and cliff, 
 
 and again those fine bursts of prospect, 
 we must turn to the Nether Stowey poems of Coleridge. 
 . . . Assuredly, the writer, . . . who was a travel- 
 ler at times through cloudland, and who could create from 
 his imagination such visions as those of ' Kubla Khan.' had 
 also his foot on English grass and heather, and writing, to use 
 Wordsworth's phrase, with his eye upon the object, was able 
 to add a page of rare fidelity to the descriptive poetry of our 
 country. . . . How exquisite is the description of the 
 journeying moon, what magic in the simplest words : 
 
 * The moving moon went up the sky, 
 And nowhere did abide ; 
 Softly she was going up 
 With a star or two beside.'" 
 
 Edward Dowden. 
 
 " In his descriptions you saw the progress of human happi- 
 ness and liberty in bright and never-ending succession, like 
 the steps of Jacob's ladder, with airy shapes ascending and de- 
 scending and with the voice of God at the top of the ladder." 
 William Hazlitt. 
 
 " Talfourd writes of seeing ' the palm-trees wave and the 
 pyramids tower in the long perspective of his style ' . . . 
 the gorgeous suggestiveness of his poetry." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Oh then 'twere loveliest sympathy to mark 
 The berries of the half-uprooted ash 
 Dripping and bright ; and list the torrents' dash, 
 Beneath the cypress or the yew more dark, 
 Seated at ease on some smooth, mossy rock ; 
 
 Till high o'erhead his beckoning friend appears. 
 And from the forehead of the topmost crag 
 Shouts eagerly ; for haply there uprears 
 
430 COLERIDGE 
 
 That shadowing pine its old romantic limbs 
 Which latest shall detain the enamoured sight 
 Seen from below, whene'er the valley dims, 
 Tinged yellow with the rich departing light ; 
 And haply, basoned in some unsunned cleft, 
 A beauteous spring, the rock's collected tears, 
 Sleeps sheltered there, scarce wrinkled by the gale." 
 
 To a Young Friend. 
 
 " A green and silent spot, amid the hills, 
 A small and silent dell ! O'er stiller place 
 No singing sky-lark ever poised himself : 
 The hills are heathy, save that swelling slope 
 Which hath a gay and gorgeous covering on, 
 All golden with the never-bloomless furze, 
 Which now blooms most profusely : but the dell, 
 Bathed by the mist, is fresh and delicate 
 As vernal cornfield or the unripe flax, 
 When, through its half-transparent stalks, at eve, 
 The level sunshine glimmers with green light." 
 
 Fears in Solitude, 
 
 " As when a shepherd on a vernal morn 
 
 Through some thick fog creeps tim'rous with slow foot ; 
 
 Darkling he fixes on th' immediate road 
 
 His downward eye : all else of fairest kind 
 
 Hid or deformed. But lo ! the bursting Sun ! 
 
 Touched by the enchantment of that sudden beam, 
 
 Strait the black vapour melteth, and in globes 
 
 Of dewy glitter gems each bank and tree ; 
 
 On every leaf, on every blade it hangs ! 
 
 Dance glad the new-born intermingling rays, 
 
 And wide around the landscape streams with glory ! " 
 
 Religious Musings. 
 
 5. Tenderness. "The tenderness of sentiment which 
 touches with significant color the pure white imagination is 
 here [in ' The Ancient Mariner '] soft and piteous enough, but 
 womanly rather than effeminate." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
COLERIDGE 431 
 
 " Critics . . . hardly realize enough the fine human- 
 ity in Coleridge's poetry. . . . ' I conceive the leading 
 point about Coleridge's work,' wrote Dante Rossetti, ' is its 
 human love. ' ... To understand and to feel his poetry 
 aright we must think of him, not as forever floating on gold 
 and emerald plumes somewhere above Mount Abora and feed- 
 ing on the honey-dew but also as nestling in that cottage at 
 Clevedon or at Nether Stowey with a wife and child, loving 
 the Somerset hills and coombs, rich in friendships, and deeply 
 interested in the great public events of his own time." Ed- 
 ward Dow den. 
 
 " That gift of handling the finer passages of human feeling 
 at once with power and delicacy ... is illustrated by 
 a passage on Friendship." Walter Pater. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " He prayeth well who loveth well 
 Both man and bird and beast. 
 
 He prayeth best who loveth best 
 All things both great and small ; 
 For the dear God, who loveth us, 
 He made and loveth all." 
 
 Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
 
 " Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side, 
 Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm, 
 Fill up the interspersed vacancies 
 And momentary pauses of the thought ! 
 My babe so beautiful ! it thrills my heart 
 With tender gladness, thus to look at thee, 
 And think that thou shalt learn far other lore 
 And in far other scenes ! " Frost at Midnight. 
 
 " O sweeter than the marriage -feast, 
 'Tis sweeter far to me, 
 To walk together to the kirk 
 With a goodly company : 
 
432 COLERIDGE 
 
 " To walk together to the kirk, 
 And all together pray, 
 While each to his great Father bends, 
 Old men and babes and loving friends 
 And youths and maidens gay." 
 
 Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
 
 6. Imaginative Beauty Finish. " Coleridge's late 
 poems, 'Youth and Age,' ' The Garden of Boccaccio,' and 
 ' Work without Hope ' are perfect, flawless, priceless. . . . 
 Of passion Coleridge has nothing ; but for height and per- 
 fection of imaginative quality he is the greatest of lyric 
 poets. . . . His style, indeed, was a plant of strangely 
 slow growth, but perfect and wonderful in its final flow- 
 er. ... Of his best verses I venture to affirm that the 
 world has nothing like them, and can never have ; that they 
 are of the highest kind and of their own. . . . His 
 poetry at the highest is beyond all words and all praise of 
 men. He who can define it could unweave a rainbow. He 
 who could praise it aright would be such another as the poet. 
 There is a charm upon these pages [' Christabel ' and ' Kubla 
 Khan '] which can only be felt in silent submission of wonder. 
 1 The Ancient Mariner ' is, without doubt, one of the triumphs 
 of poetry. . . . For its execution, I presume no human 
 ear is too dull to see how perfect it is and how high the kind 
 of perfection. Here is not the speckless and elaborate finish 
 which shows everywhere the fresh rasp of file or chisel on its 
 smooth and spruce excellence ; this is faultless after the fashion 
 of a flower or a tree. Thus it has grown ; not thus has it 
 been carved. . . . Any separate line has its own heaven- 
 ly beauty, but to cite separate lines is intolerable. They are 
 to be received in rapture of silence : such a silence as Chap- 
 man describes ; silence like a god, peaceful and young, which 
 
 * Left so free mine ears 
 That I might hear the music of the spheres, 
 And all the angels singing out of heaven.' " 
 
 A. C. Swinburne. 
 
COLERIDGE 433 
 
 " In poetic quality, above all in that most poetic of all 
 qualities, a keen sense of and delight in beauty, they [' The 
 ' Ancient Mariner ' and ' Christabel '] are quite out of pro- 
 portion to his other compositions. ... A warm poetic 
 joy in everything beautiful, whether it be a moral sentiment, 
 like the friendship of Roland or Leoline, or only the flakes of 
 falling light from the water-snakes this is the predominant 
 quality of the matter of his poetry, as cadence is the pre- 
 dominant quality of its form." Walter H. Pater. 
 
 " He certainly was a main influence in showing the English 
 mind how it could emancipate itself from the vulgarizing 
 tyranny of common sense and in teaching it to recognize in 
 the imagination an important factor not only in the happiness 
 but in the destiny of man. ... I should find it hard to 
 explain the singular charm of his diction ; there is so much 
 nicety of art and purpose in it, whether for music or meaning. 
 Nor does it need any explanation, for we all feel it. 
 Coleridge's words have the unashamed nakedness of Scripture, 
 of the Eden of diction, ere the voluble serpent entered in. 
 This felicity of speech in Coleridge's best verse is more re- 
 markable because it was an acquisition. . . . When he 
 is well inspired, as in his best poetry he commonly is, he gives 
 us the very quintessence of perception, the clearly crystallized 
 precipitation of all that is most precious in the ferment of im- 
 pression after the impertinent and obtrusive particles have 
 evaporated from the memory. It is the pure, visual ecstasy 
 disengaged from the confused and confusing material that 
 gives it birth. It seems the very beatitude of artless sim- 
 plicity, and is the most finished product of art. 
 What I think constitutes his great power, as it certainly is 
 his greatest charm, is the perpetual presence of imagina- 
 tion. ... His fancy and his diction would long ago 
 have placed him above all his contemporaries had they been 
 under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady 
 will. . . . He has written some of the most poetical 
 28 
 
434 COLERIDGE 
 
 poetry in the language, and one poem, < The Ancient Mariner,' 
 not only unparalleled but unapproached in its kind, and that 
 kind of the rarest. . . . This [his imagination] was the 
 lifted torch (to borrow his own words again) that bade the 
 starry walls of passages, dark before to the apprehension of 
 the most intelligent reader, sparkle with lustre, latent in them 
 to be sure, but not all their own. . . . She [imagina- 
 tion] was his lifelong house-mate, if not always hanging over 
 his shoulders and whispering in his ear, yet within easy call, 
 like the Abra of Prior, 
 
 ' Abra was with him ere he spoke her name ; 
 And though he called another, Abra came.' " 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 " It would need Coleridge the critic to discover the secrets 
 of the genius of Coleridge the poet. To solve intellectual 
 puzzles in verse ... is, after all, not difficult ; but to 
 find expressions in the language of thought corresponding to 
 pure melody and imaginative loveliness, is a finer exercise of 
 wit. . . . The device of animating the bodies of the 
 dead crew with a troop of seraphs, whether the suggestion is 
 due to St. Paulinus or to Wordsworth, is so conceived and 
 executed as to illustrate admirably Coleridge's power of evok- 
 ing beauty out of horror. Nor are his strange creatures of the 
 sea those hideous worms which a vulgar dealer in the super- 
 natural might have invented. Seen in a great calm by the 
 light of the moon, these creatures are beautiful in the joy of 
 their life. . . . This ode, ' Recantation,' is remarkable 
 . . . on account of the logic of passion and imagination 
 with which the theme is involved." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " Coleridge plainly has the instinct for beauty and the spell 
 of measured words. . . . The marvellous 'Rime/ with 
 its ghostly crew, its spectral seas, its transformation of the 
 elements, is pure and high-sustained imagination. . . . 
 In ' Christabel ' both the terror and the loveliness are haunt- 
 ing." E. C. Stedman. 
 
COLERIDGE 435 
 
 " No man has all the sources of poetry in such profusion." 
 Sir Walter Scott. 
 
 " His metaphors are often unique and beautiful. 
 It may be questioned if any modern writer, whose works are 
 equally limited, has illustrated his ideas with more originality 
 and interest." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " He robes himself in moonlight and moves among images 
 of which we cannot be assured for a while whether they are 
 substantial forms of sense or fantastic visions." John Foster. 
 
 (( No doubt he had imagination enough ... to have 
 furnished forth a thousand poets." J. C. Shairp. 
 
 " He has only to draw the slides of his imagination, and a 
 thousand subjects expand before him, startling him with their 
 brilliancy or losing themselves in endless obscurity. 
 It ['The Ancient Mariner'] is unquestionably a work of genius 
 of wild, irregular, overwhelming imagination." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 "They [< The Friend' and 'Aids to Reflection'] excite 
 wonder because the processes of the imagination and under- 
 standing are continually crossing each other and producing 
 magnificent disorder. Visions intermingle with deductions 
 and inference follows image. He thinks emotions and feels 
 thoughts." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " When the bent flower beneath the night-dew weeps 
 And on the lake the silver lustre sleeps, 
 Amid the paly radiance soft and sad, 
 She meets my lonely path in moon-beams clad." 
 
 Lines on an Autumnal Evening. 
 
 " The moon shines dim in the open air, 
 And not a moonbeam enters here. 
 But they without its light can see 
 The chamber carved so curiously, 
 
43 6 COLERIDGE 
 
 Carved with figures strange and sweet, 
 
 All made out of the carver's brain, 
 
 For a lady's chamber meet : 
 
 The lamp with two-fold silver chain 
 
 Is fastened to an angel's feet. 
 
 The silver lamp burns dead and dim ; 
 
 But Christabel the lamp will trim. 
 
 She trimmed the lamp and made it bright, 
 
 And left it swinging to and fro, 
 
 While Geraldine, in wretched plight, 
 
 Sank down upon the floor below." Christabel. 
 
 " O fair is Love's first hope to gentle mind ! 
 
 As Eve's first star thro' fleecy cloudlet peeping; 
 And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, 
 O'er willowy meads and shadowed waters creeping, 
 And Ceres' golden fields ; the sultry hind 
 teets it with brow uplift, and stays his reaping." 
 
 First Advent of Love. 
 
 7- Seriousness Self-reflection. Coleridge wrote 
 concerning his own abilities and convictions as follows : 
 " I have felt, and deeply, that the poet's high functions were 
 not my proper assignment ; that many may be worthy to 
 listen to the strains of Apollo, of the sacred choir, and be able 
 to discriminate and feel and love its .genuine harmonies, yet 
 not, therefore, called to receive the harp into their own 
 hands and to join the concert. . . . From my childhood 
 I have had no avarice, no ambition ; my very vanity in my 
 vainest moods was nine-tenths of it the desire and delight and 
 necessity of loving and being loved." 
 
 " Always troubled with self-thought in the midst of nature, 
 philosophizing about himself and her, moving off to visit 
 other things than her, the poet can never see nature exactly as 
 she is. " Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " It was, perhaps, no more than a question of the state of his 
 stomach whether his assiduous interest in himself should result 
 in intellectual pride or in self-abasement." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 
COLERIDGE 437 
 
 " In Coleridge we feel already that faintness and obscure 
 dejection which clung like some contagious dampness to all his 
 work. Wordsworth was to be distinguished by a joyful and 
 penetrative conviction of "the existence of certain latent affin- 
 ities between nature and man which reciprocally gild the mind 
 and nature with a kind of heavenly alchemy. ... In 
 Coleridge's sadder, more purely intellectual cast of genius 
 what with Wordsworth was sentiment or instinct became a 
 philosophical idea or philosophical formula, developed, as 
 much as possible, after the abstract and metaphysical fashion 
 of the transcendental schools of Germany. . . . Perhaps 
 the chief offence in Coleridge is an excess of seriousness, a 
 seriousness arising not from any moral principle but from a 
 misconception of the perfect manner. . . . He has, too, 
 his passages of that sort of impassioned contemplation on the 
 permanent and elementary conditions of nature and humanity 
 which Wordsworth held to be the essence of poetic life. 
 . . . The ' Lines to Joseph Cottle ' have the same philo- 
 sophically imaginative character." Walter Pater. 
 
 " Coleridge, as his imaginative impulse flagged, passed into 
 the reflective stage." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 11 There were, perhaps, in Coleridge some special powers of 
 fine analysis and introvertive speculation which seem to have 
 predestined him for other work than poetry. . . . The 
 poems of these two periods are few altogether, and what there 
 are are more meditative than formerly, sometimes even hope- 
 lessly dejected." J. C. Shairp. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " What hast thou, Man, that thou dar'st call thine own? 
 What is there in thee, Man, that can be known ? 
 Dark fluxion, all unfixable by thought, 
 A phantom dim of past and future wrought, 
 Vain sister of the worm life, death, soul, clod 
 Ignore thyself, and strive to know thy God ! " 
 
 Know Thyself. 
 
43$ COLERIDGE 
 
 " My God ! it is a melancholy thing 
 
 For such a man, who would full fain preserve 
 His soul in calmness, yet perforce must feel 
 For all his human brethren O my God ! 
 It weighs upon the heart, that he must think 
 What uproar and what strife may now be stirring 
 This way or that way o'er these silent hills." 
 
 Fears in Solitude. 
 
 "My genial spirits fail ; 
 And what can these avail 
 
 To lift the smothering weight from off my breast ? 
 It were a vain endeavor, 
 Though I should gaze forever, 
 On that green light that lingers in the west : 
 I may not hope from outward forms to win 
 The passion and the life whose fountains are within." 
 
 Dejection : An Ode. 
 
 8. Assimilation Imitation. " It is remarkable that 
 a poem which impresses us so much as an imaginative 
 unity . . . should in great part have been a compilation 
 from several brains and books. Young Cruikshank, a neigh- 
 bor of Coleridge at Nether Stowey, had dreamed of a skeleton 
 ship worked by a skeleton crew, and this was the starting-point 
 of the whole. It has been suggested that the blessed spirits 
 who bring the ship to harbor came from one of the epistles of 
 St. Paulinus of Nola, the friend of St. Ambrose. The crime 
 of the old Navigator . . . was Wordsworth's suggestion, 
 derived from Shelvocke's ' Voyage around the World.' Shel- 
 vocke describes the insupportable cold of the South Atlantic 
 Ocean and the perpetual squalls of sleet and snow." Edward 
 Dowden. 
 
 " Though he has left on the system he inculcated such traces 
 of himself as cannot fail to be left by any mind of original 
 power, he was anticipated in all the essentials of his doctrine 
 by the great Germans of the latter half of the last century, and 
 
COLERIDGE 439 
 
 was accompanied in it by the remarkable series of their French 
 expositors and followers." John Stuart Mill. 
 
 " The ' Hymn to Chamouni ' is an expansion of a short 
 poem in stanzas, upon the same subject, by Frederica Brun, a 
 female poet of Germany, previously known to the world under 
 her maiden name of Mtinter. The mere frame-work of the 
 poem is exactly the same. ... In ' France ' a fine ex- 
 pression or two are from < Samson Agonistes.' 
 
 " It is undeniable that Coleridge was guilty of a serious 
 theft of metaphysical wares. . . . Coleridge . . . 
 persuaded himself that he had really anticipated Schelling's 
 thoughts and might justifiably appropriate Schelling's words." 
 Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " The twelfth chapter of his ' Biographia Literaria,' which 
 comes nearer than any other of his writings to being a full 
 statement of his views, is indeed little more than a translation 
 from Schelling." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " No knell that tolled, but filled my anxious eye, 
 And suffering Nature wept that one should die." 
 
 To a Young Lady. 
 
 [Compare Shelley's " Retrospect/'] 
 
 " When, insupportably advancing, 
 
 Her arm made mockery of the warrior's tramp." 
 
 France. 
 
 [Compare " Sampson Agonistes."] 
 
 [Compare, also, Coleridge's "Song of the Pixies" with 
 Milton's "L' Allegro."] 
 
 9. Unevenness Confusion. " His good work is the 
 scantiest ever done by a man so famous in so long a life ; and 
 much of his work is bad. His genius is fluctuant and moon- 
 struck as the sea is. ... Among all verses of boys who 
 
440 COLERIDGE 
 
 were to grow up to be great, I remember none so perfect, so 
 sweet and deep in sense and sound as those which he is said 
 to have written at school, headed ' Time, Real and Imagi- 
 nary ; ' and following hard on these come a score or two of 
 poems each more feeble and flatulent than the last. [See, for 
 illustration, his ' Lines to a Young Ass.'] His genius walked 
 for some time over much waste ground with irregular and un- 
 sure steps. Some poems, touched with exquisite grace, with 
 clear and pure harmony, are tainted with somewhat of feeble 
 and sickly, which impairs our relish. . . . His political 
 verse is most often weak of foot and hoarse of accent. He is 
 like the legendary footless bird of Paradise. . . . Had 
 his wings always held out, it had been well for him and us. 
 Unhappily, this footless creature would perforce too often furl 
 his wings in mid air and try his footing on earth, where his 
 gait was like a swan's on shore. . . . Compare the nerve- 
 less and hysterical verses headed < Fears in Solitude ' with the 
 majestic and masculine sonnet of Wordsworth written at the 
 same time on the same subject. The lesser poet [Words- 
 worth] speaks with a calm force of thought and resolution ; 
 Coleridge wails, appeals, deprecates, objurgates in a flaccid and 
 querulous fashion without heart or spirit." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 "To many people Coleridge seemed to wander: and he 
 seemed then to wander most when the compass and huge cir- 
 cuit in which his illustrations moved travelled farthest into 
 remote regions before they began to revolve. Long before 
 this coming around commenced most people had lost him and 
 naturally enough supposed he had lost himself. . . . How- 
 ever, I can assert, from my long and intimate knowledge of 
 Coleridge's mind, that logic the most severe was as inalienable 
 from his modes of thought as grammar was from his language." 
 De Quincey. 
 
 11 If anything imparts unity to his marred life, now soaring 
 high or diving deep, now trailing in the dust with broken 
 wing, it is this, that alike in the glory of his youth and the 
 
COLERIDGE 441 
 
 dawn of his genius, in the infirmity and conscious self-degre- 
 dation of his manhood, and amid the lassitude and languor of 
 his latest days, he was always one who loved the light and 
 grew toward it." Edward Dow den. 
 
 " Coleridge's creative mood was as brief as it was enrapt- 
 uring. From his twenty-sixth to his twenty-eighth year he 
 blazed out like Tycho Brahe's star, then sank his light in 
 metaphysics, exhibiting little thenceforth of worth to lit- 
 erature except a criticism of poets and dramatists." E. C. 
 Stedman. 
 
 " Musical are many of the periods, beautiful the images, 
 and here and there comes a single idea of striking value ; but 
 for these we are obliged to hear many discursive exordiums, 
 irrelevant episodes, and random speculations." If. T. 
 Tucker man. 
 
 "Nothing gave his will force but high-pitched enthusiasm, 
 and with its death the enduring energy of life visited him no 
 more. . . . The weakness of his will was doubled by 
 disease and trebled by opium. . . . There is no lesson 
 so solemn in the whole range of modern poetry genius with- 
 out will religion without strength hope without persever- 
 ance art without the power of finish. . . . The volume 
 we have from him influences us with all the sadness that a 
 garden does in which two or three plants rise and flower per- 
 fectly, but in which the rest are choked with weeds or run to 
 seed." Stop ford Brooke. 
 
 " Strong as is his pinion, his flight seems to resemble rather 
 that of the eaglet than of the full-grown eagle, even to the 
 last." H. D. Traill. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " This day among the faithful placed 
 
 And fed with fontal manna ; 
 O with maternal title graced, 
 Dear Anna's dearest Anna ! 
 
442 COLERIDGE 
 
 " While others wish thee wise and fair, 
 
 A maid of spotless fame, 
 I'll breathe this more compendious prayer 
 May'st thou deserve thy name ! 
 
 " So, when her tale of days all flown, 
 
 Thy mother shall be missed here ; 
 When Heaven at length shall claim its own 
 And angels snatch their sister." 
 
 On the Christening of a Friend's Child. 
 
 " Why need I say, Louisa dear ! 
 How glad I am to see you here, 
 
 A lovely convalescent ; 
 Risen from the bed of pain and fear 
 And feverish heat incessant. 
 
 " The sunny showers, the dappled sky, 
 The little birds that warble high, 
 
 Their vernal loves commencing, 
 Will better welcome you than I 
 
 With their sweet influencing. 
 
 " Believe me, while in bed you lay, 
 Your danger taught us all to pray : 
 
 You made us grow devouter ! 
 Each eye looked up and seemed to say, 
 How can we do without her." 
 
 To a Young Lady. 
 
 " Mark this holy chapel well ! 
 The birth-place, this, of William Tell. 
 Here, where stands God's altar dread, 
 Stood his parent's marriage-bed. 
 
 " Here, first, an infant to her breast, 
 Him his loving mother prest ; 
 And kissed the babe, and blessed the day, 
 And prayed as mothers used to pray. 
 
COLERIDGE 443 
 
 " To Nature and to Holy Writ 
 Alone did God the boy commit : 
 
 Where flashed and roared the torrent, oft 
 His soul found wings, and soared aloft ! 
 
 " The straining oar and chamois chase 
 
 Had formed his limbs to strength and grace : 
 On wave and wind the boy would toss, 
 Was great, nor knew how great he was ! " 
 
 Tell's Birthplace. 
 
 . Abstraction Obscurity Lack of Logical Se- 
 quence. " His intense and overwrought abstraction, that 
 sensuous fluctuation of soul, that floating fervor of fancy, 
 whence his poetry rose as from a shifting sea, in faultless com- 
 pletion of form and charm, had absorbed if indeed there 
 were any to absorb all emotion of love or faith, all heroic 
 beauty of moral passion, all inner and outer life of the only 
 kind possible to such other poets as Dante or Shelley, Milton 
 or Hugo. . . . Want of self-command left him often to 
 the mercy of a caprice which swept him through tangled and 
 tortuous ways of thought, through brakes and byways of 
 fancy, where the solid subject in hand was either utterly lost 
 and thrown over, or so transmuted and transfigured that any 
 recognition of it was as hopeless as any profit. ... In 
 an essay well worth translating out of jargon into some human 
 language, he speaks of the ' holy jungle of human metaphysics.' 
 Out of that holy and pestilential jungle he emerged but too 
 rarely into sunlight and clear air." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " An infirm will, a dreamy ideality, a preternatural subtlety 
 of thought and intense religious susceptibility were thrown 
 among a people eminently practical and prosaic, impatient of 
 romance, indifferent to intellectual refinements, strict in their 
 moral expectations, scrupulous of the veracities, but afraid of 
 the fervors of devotion." James Martineau. 
 
 " We see no sort of difference between his published and 
 
444 COLERIDGE 
 
 his unpublished compositions. It is just as impossible to get 
 at the meaning of the one as the other. . . . Each sev- 
 eral work exists only in the imagination of the author, and 
 is quite inaccessible to the understandings of his readers. 
 
 This work [" The Friend "] is so obscure that it has 
 been supposed to be written in cypher, and that it is necessary 
 to read it upwards and downwards, or backwards and for- 
 wards, as it happens, to make head or tail of it. ... His 
 talk was excellent if you let him start from no premises and 
 come to no conclusion." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " You could not call this aimless, cloud-capt, cloud-bound 
 lawlessly meandering discourse by the name of excellent talk. 
 
 The moaning sing-song of that theosophico-meta- 
 physicalo monotony left you at last with a very dreary feeling. 
 
 Coleridge talked with musical energy two stricken 
 hours, his face radiant and moist, and communicated no 
 meaning whatsoever to any individual of his hearers. 
 You swam and fluttered on in the mistiest wide unintelligible 
 deluge of things, for the most part in a rather profitless, 
 uncomfortable manner." Carlyle. 
 
 " He considered that the object of poetry was to excite 
 subtle trains of imaginative association ; but he was not satis- 
 fied, like Wordsworth, with simply analyzing the impressions 
 of his own mind. . . . His genius was of far too weird 
 and romantic an order to succeed in romantic poetry. . . . 
 I think it is evident that he began to reason on the subtle 
 affinities between sound and sense and to perceive that iso- 
 lated romantic images might be so linked together by mere 
 metrical movement as to produce the effect of unity which the 
 mind requires in an ideal creation. . . . He resolved, 
 in fact, deliberately, to compose as a musician. ... So 
 little does the effect of Coleridge's poetry depend on the log- 
 ical sequence of ideas that of his four really characteristic 
 poems three are fragments and one is said to have been com- 
 posed in a dream ; while ' The Ancient Mariner ' was founded 
 

 COLERIDGE 445 
 
 on the dream of a friend. . . . The effect, both in * The 
 Ancient Mariner' and in ' Christabel,' is produced by the 
 combination of isolated, weird, and romantic images in a 
 strange elfin metre. . . . His love of metaphysics in- 
 duced him to believe that he could penetrate behind the veil 
 of sense and establish a transcendental basis for the law of the 
 association of ideas. ' ' W. J. Courthope. 
 
 " I cannot help being reminded of the partiality he often 
 betrays for clouds. . . . ' The Ancient Mariner ' is mar- 
 vellous in its mastery over that delightfully fortuitous incon- 
 sequence that is the adamantine logic of dreamland." 
 Lowell. 
 
 " The subtle-souled psychologist." Shelley. 
 
 " Even ' Christabel ' is a figure somewhat too faintly drawn. 
 All his other imaginings of women are exquisite 
 abstractions, framed of purely feminine elements, but repre- 
 senting woman rather than being themselves veritable women. 
 . . . In Coleridge's first volume of verse he had styled 
 a considerable number of the pieces 'Effusions.' . . . 
 The poet, in these effusions, places himself in some environ- 
 ment of beauty, submits his mind to the suggestions of the 
 time and place, falls as it were of free will into a reverie, in 
 which the thoughts and images meander stream-like at their 
 own pleasure, or rather as if the power of volition were sus- 
 pended and the current must needs follow the line of least 
 resistance; then, as if by good luck, comes the culmination 
 of some soft subsidence, and the poem ceases. In the earlier 
 odes . . . there is indeed an evolution, but it proceeds 
 sometimes by those fits and starts which were supposed to 
 prove in writers of the ode a kind of Pindaric excitement. 
 . . . The sequences of thought and feeling in these earlier 
 poems are often either of the meditative-meandering or the 
 spasmodic-passionate kind." Edward Dowden. 
 
 "The restless activity of Coleridge's mind in chasing ab- 
 stract truths and burying himself in the dark places of human 
 
446 COLERIDGE 
 
 speculation seemed to me, in a great measure, an attempt to 
 escape out of his own personal wretchedness." De Quincey. 
 " [He] frequently changed his mind, and . . . cer- 
 tainly appears to thinkers of a different order to add obscur- 
 ity even to subjects which are necessarily obscure." Leslie 
 Stephen. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But that we roam unconscious, or with hearts 
 Unfeeling of our universal Sire, 
 And that in his vast family no Cain 
 Injures uninjured (in her best-aimed blow 
 Victorious murder a blind suicide) 
 Haply for this some younger angel now 
 Looks down on human nature : and, behold ! 
 A sea of blood bestrewed with wrecks, where mad 
 Embattled interests on each other rush 
 With unhelmed rage ! " Religious Musings. 
 
 " Verse, a Breeze 'mid blossoms straying, 
 Where HOPE clung feeding, like a bee 
 Both were mine ! Life went a maying 
 With NATURE, HOPE, and POESY, 
 
 When I was young ! 
 
 When I was young ? Ah, woeful WHEN ! 
 Ah for the Change 'twixt Now and Then ! 
 This breathing House not built with hands, 
 This body that does me grievous wrong, 
 O'er aery Cliffs and glittering Sands, 
 How lightly then it flashed along : 
 Like those trim skiffs, unknown of yore, 
 On winding Lakes and Rivers wide, 
 That ask no aid of Sail or Oar, 
 That fear no spite of Wind or Tide ! " 
 
 Youth and Age. 
 
 " But properties are God : the naked mass 
 (If mass there be, fantastic guest or ghost) 
 Acts only by its inactivity. 
 
COLERIDGE 447 
 
 Here we pause humbly. Others boldlier think 
 That as one body seems the aggregate 
 Of atoms numberless, each organized ; 
 So by a strange and dim similitude 
 Infinite myriads of self-conscious minds 
 Are one all-conscious Spirit, which informs 
 With absolute ubiquity of thought 
 (His one eternal self-affirming act!) 
 All his involved Monads, that yet seem 
 With various province and apt agency 
 Each to pursue its own self-centring end." 
 
 The Destiny of Nations. 
 
 12. Erudition Intellectuality. Hazlitt, who hated 
 Coleridge as a politician and assailed him virulently, de- 
 clared, " He is the only person I ever knew who answered to 
 the idea of a man of genius. . . . His mind was clothed 
 with wings, and, lifted on them, he raised philosophy to 
 Heaven." Dr. Arnold called Coleridge "more of a great 
 man than any one who has lived within the four seas in this 
 generation." 
 
 " The largest and most spacious intellect, the subtlest and 
 the most comprehensive, that has yet existed among men. 
 . . . He spun daily and at all hours, for mere amusement 
 of his own activities and from the loom of his own magical 
 brain, theories . . . such as Schelling no, nor any Ger- 
 man that ever breathed, not John Paul could have emulated 
 in his dreams. . . . Coleridge was armed, at all points, 
 with the scholastic erudition which bore upon all questions 
 that could arise in polemic divinity." De Quincey. 
 " He was a mighty poet and 
 
 A subtle-souled psychologist ; 
 
 All things he seemed to understand, 
 
 Of old or new, on sea or land, 
 
 Save his own soul, which was a mist." 
 
 Charles Lamb. 
 
44^ COLERIDGE 
 
 " All other men whom I have ever known are mere chil- 
 dren to him. " Southey. 
 
 " Bentham excepted, no Englishman of recent date has left 
 his impress so deeply in the opinions and mental tendencies 
 of those among us who attempt to enlighten their practice by 
 philosophical meditation. ... No one has done more 
 to shape the opinions of those among England's younger men 
 who may be said to have any opinions at all. ... He 
 has been the great awakener in this country of the spirit of 
 philosophy within the bounds of traditional opinion. 
 These two [Bentham and Coleridge] agreed in being the men 
 who, in their age and country, did most to enforce by precept 
 and example the necessity of a philosophy. They agreed in 
 making it their occupation to recall opinions to first prin- 
 ciples. ' ' John Stuart Mill. 
 
 " Coleridge's thought may almost be said to be as wide 
 as life. . . . There were perhaps . . . some special 
 powers of fine analysis and introvertive speculation, which 
 seem to have predestined him for other work than poet- 
 ry. ... Are they mistaken who see in the unearthly 
 weirdness of 'The Ancient Mariner,' and the mysterious 
 witchery of ' Christabel ' those very mental elements in solu- 
 tion which, condensed and turned inward, would find their 
 most congenial place in 'the exhausting atmosphere of tran- 
 scendental ideas? ' . . . His eye flashed with a lightning 
 glance from the most abstract truth to the minutest practi- 
 cal detail and back again from this to the abstract princi- 
 ple. . . . When once his mental powers begin to work, 
 their movements are on a vastness of scale and with a many- 
 sidedness of view, which, if they render him hard to follow, 
 make him also stimulative and suggestive of thought beyond 
 all other modern writers. . . . His mind was a very 
 treasure-house of ideas. . . . These [Juvenile Poems] 
 mark, perhaps, the tumult of his thick-thronging thoughts, 
 struggling to utter themselves with force and freshness, yet 
 

 COLERIDGE 449 
 
 not quite disengaged from the old commonplaces of poetic 
 diction, ' eve's dusky car ' and such like, and from those 
 frigid personifications of abstract qualities in which the former 
 age delighted."/. C. Shairp. 
 
 " Since Shakespeare and Milton we have had nothing at 
 all comparable to him." Walter Savage Landor. 
 
 " His mind is learned in all the learning of the Egyptians 
 as well as the Greeks and Romans ; and though we have 
 heard simpletons say that he knows nothing of science, we 
 have heard him in Chemistry puzzle Sir Humphry Davy and 
 prove to his own satisfaction that Leibnitz and Newton, 
 though good men, were but indifferent astronomers. . . . 
 If there be any man of great and original genius alive at this 
 moment in Europe, it is S. T. Coleridge. . . . His is one 
 of the most deeply musing spirits that ever breathed forth its 
 influence in the majestic language of England." Professor 
 Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
 " Instead, like Wordsworth, of seeking the sources of sub- 
 limity in the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges through 
 all history and science, investigating all that has really exist- 
 ed and all that has had foundation only in the wildest and 
 strangest minds. . . . The term ' myriad-minded,' which 
 he has happily applied to Shakespeare, is truly descriptive of 
 himself. . . . The riches of his mind were developed 
 not in writing but in his speech conversation I can scarcely 
 call it which no one who once heard can ever forget. Un- 
 able to work in solitude, he sought the gentle stimulus of 
 social admiration, and under its influence poured forth with- 
 out stint the marvellous resources of a mind rich in the spoils 
 of time richer far in its own glorious imagination and deli- 
 cate fancy." T: N. Talfourd. 
 
 " 1 have known many men who have done wonderful things, 
 but the most wonderful man I ever knew was Coleridge." 
 Wordsworth. 
 
 " Thus each thought that was to have been only one 
 29 
 
450 COLERIDGE 
 
 thought, and to have transmitted the reader's mind im- 
 mediately forward, becomes an exceeding complex combina- 
 tion of thought, almost a dissertation in miniature, and thus 
 our journey to the assigned end (if, indeed, we are carried so 
 far, which is not always the case) becomes nothing less than 
 a visit of inspection to every garden, manufactory, museum, 
 and antiquity situated near the road throughout its whole 
 length. . . . Or if we might compare the series of ideas 
 in a composition to a military line, we should say that many 
 of the author's images are supernumerarily attended by so 
 many related but secondary and subordinate ideas, that the 
 array of thought has some resemblance to what that military 
 line would be if many of the men, veritable and brave sol- 
 diers, stood in the ranks surrounded by their wives and chil- 
 dren. . . . His are the most extraordinary faculties I 
 have ever yet seen resident in a form of flesh and blood." 
 -John Forster. 
 
 " Samuel Taylor Coleridge was like the Rhine, ' that ex- 
 ulting and abounding river; ' he was full of words, full of 
 thoughts ; yielding both in an unfailing flow that delighted 
 many and perplexed a few of his hearers. He was a man of 
 prodigious and miscellaneous reading, always willing to com- 
 municate all he knew. . . . From Alpha to Omega all 
 was familjar to him. . . . He went from flower to flower 
 throughout the whole garden of learning, like the butterfly or 
 the bee most like the bee. . . . He was so full of in- 
 formation that it was a relief to him to part with some of it 
 to others. ... I imagine that no man had ever read so 
 many books and at the same time had digested so much." 
 B. W. Procter. 
 
 " The ardor, delicacy, energy of his intellect, his resolute 
 desire to get at the roots of things and deeper yet, if deeper 
 might be, will always enchant and attract all spirits of like 
 mould and temper." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " The molten material of his mind, too abundant for the 
 
COLERIDGE 451 
 
 capacity of the mould, overflowed it in fiery gushes of fiery 
 excess. . . . They [his associates] all thought of him 
 what Scott said of him, ' No man has all the resources of 
 poetry in such profusion.' " Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATION. 
 
 " As ere from Lieule-Oaive's vapory head 
 The Laplander beholds the far-off sun 
 Dart his slant beam on unobeying snows, 
 While yet the stern and solitary night 
 Brooks no alternate sway, the Boreal Morn 
 With mimic lustre substitutes its gleam, 
 Guiding his course or by Niemi lake 
 Or Balda Zhiok, or the mossy stone 
 Of Solfar-kapper, while the snowy blast 
 Drifts arrowy by, or eddies round his sledge, 
 Making the poor babe at its mother's back 
 Scream in its scanty cradle : he the while 
 Wins gentle solace as with upward eye 
 He marks the streamy banners of the North, 
 Thinking himself those happy spirits shall join 
 Who there in floating robes of rosy light 
 Dance sportively." The Destiny of Nations. 
 
WORDSWORTH, 1770-1850 
 
 Biographical Outline. William Wordsworth, born at 
 Cockermouth, England, April 7, 1770; father an attorney 
 and agent to Sir James Lowther, afterward Lord Lonsdale ; 
 mother the daughter of a mercer of Westmoreland ; Words- 
 worth's boyhood is passed partly at Cockermouth and partly 
 with his mother's parents at Penrith ; he records of himself 
 that, as a child, he was of ' ' a stiff, moody, and violent temper, ' ' 
 and that he once seriously contemplated suicide on being 
 checked for some boyish error ; during his early boyhood he 
 read "all of Fielding's works, Don Quixote,' 'Gil Bias,' 
 and any part of Swift that I liked ' Gulliver's Travels ' and 
 ' The Tale of a Tub ' being both much to my taste ; " in his 
 ninth year Wordsworth is sent to a school at Hawkshead ; his 
 first verses are written as school task- work, and are entitled 
 "Summer Vacation;" to these he adds voluntarily other 
 verses on " The Return to School ; " in his fifteenth year he 
 wins the admiration of his fellow-pupils by writing verses in 
 honor of the second centenary of the Hawkshead school, 
 which was founded in 1585 by x Archbishop Sandys; Words- 
 worth afterward called these youthful verses " a tame imitation 
 of Pope's versification and a little in his style; " during his 
 school-days he is profoundly impressed by the majestic scenery 
 about him in the vicinity of Hawkshead ; after his father's 
 death, in 1783, Wordsworth is placed under the care of two 
 uncles, who enable him to continue his education ; an estate 
 of ^5,000, which belonged to his father, had been seized by 
 Lord Lonsdale, and it was not till that nobleman's death, in 
 1 80 1, after most of the remaining fortune of the family had 
 been spent in litigation over the matter, that it was recovered ; 
 
 452 
 
WORDSWORTH 453 
 
 meantime the poet's uncles recognize the talent of the young 
 man and his brother Christopher (afterward master of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge), and give to each a course at the Uni- 
 versity of Cambridge. 
 
 Wordsworth enters St. John's College, Cambridge, in Oc- 
 tober, 1787, thus becoming a successor of Spenser, Dryden, 
 Ben Jonson, Milton, and Gray, and a predecessor of Carlyle 
 and Byron all Cambridge men ; the tranquil atmosphere 
 and the noble associations of Cambridge deeply affect the 
 young poet; he spends his first long college vacation at 
 Hawkshead, where he develops " a somewhat closer interest in 
 the joys and sorrows of the villagers ; " his second long vaca- 
 tion is spent at Penrith with that sister who was to be his life- 
 long companion, critic, and friend ; his third college summer 
 is spent with his friend Jones in a walking tour through 
 Switzerland an experience narrated later in his " Prelude" 
 and then as rare as it is now common among young collegians; 
 he is graduated, B.A., from Cambridge in June, 1791, and 
 leaves the university with no fixed plans for the future ; he first 
 goes to London, and spends some time in walking about the 
 streets of the metropolis, studying the types of humanity found 
 there; from this London sojourn result the " Reverie of Poor 
 Susan" and the ''Sonnet on Westminster Bridge;" in No- 
 vember, 1791, Wordsworth lands in France, passes through 
 Paris (then in the throes of the French Revolution), and 
 settles at Orleans to study the French language ; he spends 
 nearly a year at Orleans and at Blois ; he returns as far as Paris 
 in October, 1792, and thinks seriously of entering the struggle 
 as a leader of the Girondists, but his uncles compel him, by 
 stopping his supply of funds, to return to England late in 
 1792 ; during 1792 he publishes two poems, ''The Evening 
 Walk" and "Descriptive Essays," and thus attracts the atten- 
 tion of Coleridge, though the poems are not otherwise noticed; 
 being at heart a democrat, Wordsworth is seriously disturbed 
 when England declares war against the French republic ; in 
 
454 WORDSWORTH 
 
 1795 his gifted sister becomes his permanent companion, and 
 the poet finds in her society much solace ; during this year, 
 on the death of Raisley Calvert, a friend whom Wordsworth 
 had tenderly nursed while he was dying of consumption, the 
 poet receives a bequest of ^900. 
 
 In the autumn of 1795 he settles with his sister in a snug 
 cottage at Racedown, near Crewkerne, in Dorsetshire ; he 
 records afterward that he and his sister lived for seven or eight 
 years on the interest of the ^900 plus a legacy of ^"100 that 
 his sister had received and about ^100 that he had received 
 from his "Lyrical Ballads ; " while at Racedown Wordsworth 
 completes his " Guilt and Sorrow," and writes his tragedy, 
 " The Borderers " and also "The Ruined Cottage," afterward 
 embodied in the "Excursion;" the poem last named is 
 warmly praised by Coleridge, who visits the Wordsworths at 
 Racedown in June, 1797; in July, 1797, they remove to 
 Alfoxden, a large house in Somersetshire, near Netherstowey, 
 where Coleridge was then living ; here Wordsworth increases 
 his income by taking as a pupil a young son of Basil Montagu, 
 and here he writes many of his shorter poems; during a brief 
 excursion among the Cumberland hills, in the autumn of 1797, 
 Coleridge, Wordsworth, and his sister collaborate in planning 
 "The Ancient Mariner," which Coleridge afterward puts into 
 form; Wordsworth is said to have suggested the well-known 
 incident of the albatross and the navigation of the ship by dead 
 men ; in the autumn of 1 797 was published the volume of poems 
 by Wordsworth and Coleridge called "Lyrical Ballads;" 
 besides the trivial poems of Wordsworth that have been so 
 severely and justly criticised, this volume contained "Lines 
 Written above Tintern Abbey," a poem written at Tin tern 
 Abbey in a single day during 1798, and now generally rec- 
 ognized as the author's greatest short poem. 
 
 Soon after the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads" 
 Wordsworth and his sister sail for Germany, and spend four 
 months at Goslar, near the Hartz forest, for the purpose of 
 
WORDSWORTH 455 
 
 perfecting themselves in the knowledge of the German lan- 
 guage; while at Goslar Wordsworth writes "Lucy Gray," 
 ".Ruth," " Nutting," " The Poet's Epitaph," and others of 
 his best short poems ; on the day when he leaves Goslar he 
 begins a long poem describing the development of his own 
 mind, addressed to Coleridge and written as a confidential 
 communication between intimate friends ; this poem was not 
 published till after Wordsworth's death, when his wife named 
 it " The Prelude ; " he finishes " The Prelude" in .1805, and 
 designs it as an introduction to a projected poem to be called 
 "The Recluse," of which only the second division "The 
 Excursion" has ever been published, though Wordsworth 
 wrote one book of the first part ; the material gathered for the 
 third part of " The Recluse " was afterward incorporated into 
 the poet's other works ; returning to the Lake country in the 
 spring of 1799, he becomes remarkably familiar with the dis- 
 trict and its people; his biographer asserts that " there was 
 scarcely a mile of territory in the Lake country over which he 
 had not wandered ; " the summits of Coniston and Esthwaite 
 suggest to him many of his finest poetic flights, but the lakes 
 of Grasmere and Rydal form the centre of his life and wander- 
 ings ; his relation to the Cumberland scenery appears espe- 
 cially in his " Poems on the Naming of Places ; " two of the 
 " Evening Voluntaries " were composed by the side of Rydal 
 Mere, and "The Wild Duck's Nest" was on one of the 
 Rydal islands ; soon after his return from Germany Words- 
 worth settles, with his sister, at Townend, Grasmere ; on Octo- 
 ber 4, 1802, he is married to Miss Mary Hutchinson, of Pen- 
 rith, a simple village maiden without the advantages of the 
 schools, but herself a true poet in feeling and expression ; 
 Wordsworth records that his wife was the author of the two 
 following lines of " The Daffodils : " 
 
 " They flash upon that inward eye 
 That is the bliss of solitude." 
 
456 WORDSWORTH 
 
 The life of the Wordsworths at Townend is even less luxuri- 
 ous than that of the peasants about them, and fully illustrates 
 " plain living and high thinking; " they have " a boat upon 
 the lake and a small orchard and smaller garden," but their 
 parlor is floored with stone, and their only servant an old woman 
 of sixty ; here Wordsworth continues his intimacy with Cole- 
 ridge, and the latter poet, with his family, is often a member 
 of Wordsworth's household for months together ; during 1802 
 Wordsworth writes " The Daffodils" and the sonnets on 
 " Westminster Bridge" and "Calais Sands;" in 1803 he 
 makes a tour through Scotland with his sister, and writes "The 
 Highland Girl ; " during the same year he forms a friendship 
 with Sir George Beaumont, a wealthy nobleman of Essex, and 
 Beaumont presents him with " a beautiful piece of land " at 
 Applethwaite under Skiddaw, hoping thus to induce Words- 
 worth to settle there near their mutual friend Coleridge ; this 
 friendship of Wordsworth with Beaumont, who was himself a 
 poet and a landscape-painter, lasted till that nobleman's death 
 in 1827, and the intercourse was of much service to Words- 
 worth in developing his appreciation of art. During the year 
 1800 the poet's brother John, captain of an East Indiaman, 
 had spent eight months with him at Grasmere, and the two 
 brothers had become deeply attached to each other after years 
 of separation ; the drowning of this brother, with all on board 
 his ship, in 1805, and the loss of two children in 1812, tend to 
 sadden the later years and later poetry of Wordsworth ; five 
 children in all were born to him in Grasmere ; in the spring 
 of 1808 he removes to a larger house called Allan Bank at the 
 north end of Grasmere, and thence, in 1811, to the Parsonage 
 at Grasmere ; his poem " The Triad " describes his daughter 
 Dora, while his other daughter, Catherine, is described in sev- 
 eral of his sonnets ; his passionate love of liberty and his high 
 sense of national honor appear in his sonnets dedicated "To 
 Liberty," written from 1802 to 1816, and in his prose tract 
 on "The Convention of Cintra," written in 1808. 
 
WORDSWORTH 457 
 
 In January, 1813, the Wordsworths remove to their perma- 
 nent home at Rydal Mount, where the poet remains till his 
 death ; about this time, through the interest of Lord Lons- 
 dale, Wordsworth is appointed distributor of stamps for the 
 county of Westmoreland, and to this office is added soon after- 
 ward the same post for Cumberland ; he enjoyed the revenue 
 from these offices till 1842, when it was transferred to his son; 
 later Wordsworth refused an offer of the more lucrative office 
 of collector of the port at Whitehaven, refusing to " exchange 
 his sabine villa for a load of care ; " among his near neighbors 
 at Rydal Mount are De Quincey, Southey, Professor Wilson 
 (" Christopher North"), Dr. Arnold of Rugby, and Hartley 
 Coleridge, and he is much in their society ; many of the pas- 
 sages in Wordsworth's poems are really photographs of his 
 neighbors, and " The Waggoner " is a picture of what the poet 
 imagined that he himself might have been under like circum- 
 stances ; although his poems are greeted with more ridicule 
 than has ever been given, perhaps, to any others, Wordsworth 
 never loses his calm assurance and his confidence in the supe- 
 riority of his work ; while this mental attitude saves him from 
 much suffering, it prevents that improvement which he might 
 have made through a proper recognition of the value of honest 
 criticism on his work ; he is more sensitive, however, to the 
 pecuniary results of the ridicule; in 1820, when he is fifty 
 years old, and after he has been writing for twenty-five years, 
 he confesses : " The whole of my returns from my writing 
 trade have not amounted to seven score pounds;" " The 
 Excursion " appears in 1814, and in 1815 Wordsworth repub- 
 lishes his minor poems, introducing the volume with a preface 
 and a supplementary essay on the theory of poetry an essay 
 since widely known and highly estimated. 
 
 In the summer of 1820, with his wife and sister, he makes 
 a tour of France and Italy ; in 1823 he travels in Holland, and 
 in 1824 in North Wales ; in 1828 he is in Belgium with Cole- 
 ridge, and in 1829 in Ireland ; in 1831 he visits Scott at Ab- 
 
458 WORDSWORTH 
 
 botsford, just before the departure of the great novelist for 
 Italy in search of health; during this visit Scott goes with 
 Wordsworth to Yarrow, and the incident gives rise to the 
 poem " Yarrow Revisited " and the sonnet beginning "A 
 trouble not of clouds nor weeping rain; " in 1833 Words- 
 worth makes another tour in Scotland, and in 1837 a longer 
 one through Italy, with Crabbe Robinson; in 1842 he pub- 
 lishes " Poems, Chiefly of Early and Later Years," including 
 " Ecclesiastical Sketches," a series of sonnets begun in 1821 ; 
 the impairment of his sister's mental faculties, his own severe 
 illness in 1832, and the gradual decline in the mental powers 
 of his friend Coleridge sadden the poet's last years ; between 
 1830 and 1840 he "passes from the apostle of a clique into 
 the most illustrious man of letters in England ; " an American 
 edition of his poems appears in 1837, and Oxford confers upon 
 him the degree of D.C.L. in 1839; in October, 1842, he is 
 granted an annuity of ^300 from the civil list " for distin- 
 guished literary merit ; " on the death of Southey, in March, 
 1843, Wordsworth is offered the laureateship, which he at first 
 declines as "imposing duties which I cannot undertake; " 
 but, on being assured by the Lord Chamberlain that the nom- 
 ination does not imply the imposition of any duties, but is 
 given rather as " that tribute of respect which is justly due to 
 the first of living poets," he accepts the laureateship, and " fills 
 the office for seven years with quiet dignity ; " his only com- 
 positions of any importance after becoming laureate are his 
 two prose letters protesting against the projected Kendal and 
 Windermere railway through the Lake District ; he never re- 
 covers from the shock caused by the death, in 1847, of Dora, 
 his only daughter who survived childhood ; he dies at Rydal 
 Mount, April 23, 1850. 
 
WORDSWORTH 459 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON WORDSWORTH. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 
 
 4: 354-415 and 6: 99-115. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Literature and Life." Boston, 1888, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin & Co., 253-302. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 
 
 i : 222-266. 
 
 Hazlitt, Wm., "The Spirit of the Age." London, 1886, Bell, 149-165. 
 Morley, J., " Studies in Literature. " London, 1891, Macmillan, 1-54. 
 Taine, H. A., "History of English Literature." New York, 1875, 
 
 Holt, 3 : 82-90. 
 
 De Quincey, T., "Works." Edinburgh, 1890, Black, n: 294-326. 
 Pater, W., "Appreciations." New York, 1890, Macmillan, 37-64. 
 Talfourd, T. N., "Critical and Miscellaneous Writings." Boston, 
 
 1854, Phillips, Sampson & Co., 47-59. 
 Scherer, E., "Essays on English Literature." New York, 1891, 
 
 Scribner, 174-226. 
 Wilson, J. (Christopher North), " Essays, Critical and Imaginative." 
 
 Edinburgh, 1856, Blackwood, I : 387-408. 
 Shairp, J. S. C., "Studies in Poetry." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 1-90. 
 Brooke, S. A., "Theology in the English Poets." New York, 1875, 
 
 Appleton, 93-287. 
 Hutton, R. H., "Literary Essays." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 
 
 90-132. 
 Stephen, L., "Hours in a Library." New York, 1894, Putnam, 3: 
 
 270-308. 
 Arnold, M., " Essays in Criticism." New York, Macmillan, 2: 122- 
 
 163. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "Literary History of England." New York, 1882, 
 
 Macmillan, I : 216-243 an< ^ 2 54~ 2 76. 
 Jeffrey, F., "Modern British Essayists." Philadelphia, 1852, Hart, 
 
 6: 457-473- 
 Hutton, R. A., "Essays in Theology and Criticism." London, 1877, 
 
 Daldy, 80-118. 
 Shairp, J. S. C., "Poetic Interpretations of Nature." Edinburgh, 
 
 1877, Douglass, 225-270. 
 Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul, 
 
 122-158. 
 Dowden, E., " Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 
 
 112-152. 
 
460 WORDSWORTH 
 
 Stephen, L., " History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century ' 
 London, 1881, Smith, Elder & Co., 358-362 and 451-453. 
 
 Shairp, J. S. C, "Aspects of Poetry." Boston, 1882, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., 270-323. 
 
 Hudson, H. N., "Studies in Wordsworth." Boston, 1884, Little, 
 Brown & Co., v. index. 
 
 Mason, E. T., "Personal Traits of British Authors" New York, 
 1885, Scribner, 2: 9-54. 
 
 De Vere, A., " Essays, Chiefly on Poetry." New York, 1887, Macmil- 
 lan, i : 104-264. 
 
 Wilde, Lady J. F., " Men, Women, and Books." London, 1881, Ward, 
 Lock & Bowden, 247-260. 
 
 Brimley, G., "Essays." London, 1882, Macmillan, 102-184. 
 
 Carlyle, T., "Reminiscences." New York, 1881, Scribner, 528-536. 
 
 Bagehot, W., "Literary Studies." Hartford, 1889, Travellers' Insur- 
 ance Company, I : 200-224. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Among My Books." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 201-251. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Democracy," etc. Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co., 98-115. 
 
 Hazlitt, W., "Lectures on the English Poets." London, 1884, Bell, 
 207-213. 
 
 Macaulay, T. B., " Miscellaneous Works." New York, 1880, Harper, 
 i : 470-488. 
 
 Church, R. W., " Dante and Other Essays." New York, 1891, Mac- 
 millan, 193-221. 
 
 Coleridge, S. T., "Works." New York, 1871, Harper, 3: 191-206, 
 3 6 4-375, and 394-434J 7: 169-173. 
 
 Browning, Mrs., "The English Poets." New York, 1863, Miller, 
 214-233. 
 
 Ward, T. H. (Church), "The English Poets." New York, 1881, Mac- 
 millan, 4: 1-16. 
 
 Dawson, W. J., "The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 
 Whittaker, 91-155. 
 
 Home, R. H., "A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 
 
 177-193. 
 
 Masson, D., "In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
 taker, 203-235. 
 
 Rossetti, W. M., "Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 203-225. 
 
 Caine, H., " Cobwebs of Criticism." London, 1883, Eliot Stock, 1-29. 
 
 Devey, J., " Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 87-104. 
 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 
 Francis, 214 226. 
 
WORDSWORTH 461 
 
 * 
 Chorley, H. T., " Authors of England." London, 1888, C. Tilt, 87- 
 
 93- 
 Procter, B. W., "An Autobiographical Fragment." Boston, 1877, 
 
 Roberts, 139-144. 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 21 : 455-465 (W. Pater). 
 Contemporary Review, 33 : 734-756 (E. Dowden). 
 The Month, 38 : 465-489 (De Vere). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 16 : 514-525 (A. F. Sanborn). 
 Every Saturday, 16 : 68-575 (W. Pater). 
 Catholic World, 22 : 329-338 (De Vere). 
 Eclectic Magazine, 94 : 22-42 (J. A. Symonds) ; 87 : 447-462 (L. 
 
 Stephen). 
 
 Good Words, 14 : 649-666 (Shairp). 
 American Whig Review, 448-457 (O. W. Holmes). 
 Academy, 35: 17-18 (E. Dowden); 22: 111-112 (Dowden). 
 Nineteenth Century, 15: 583 and 764-790 (Swinburne); 26: 435-451 
 
 (Minto). 
 
 Nation, 45 : 487-489 (G. E. Wood berry). 
 Critic, 3 : 333 (W. S. Kennedy). 
 National Review, 4: 512-527 (Courthope). 
 
 North British Review, 13 : 473-508 (Masson) ; 41 : 1-54 (Shairp). 
 Harper's Magazine, 62: 7-27 (M. D. Conway). 
 Edinburgh Review, 24: 1-30 (Jeffrey) ; ii: 214-231 (Jeffrey). 
 New Englander, 9 : 583-616 (N. Porter). 
 North American Review, 59: 352-384 (Whipple). 
 Tarts Magazine, 6 : 453-464 (De Quincey). 
 Quarterly Review, 12 : loo-ill (C. Lamb). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Severe Simplicity. " Wordsworth's true simplicity, 
 the simplicity which was the natural vehicle of his grand and 
 solemn thoughts, the simplicity which came from writing 
 Hos,f to the truth nf thing*? irH imH"C the wnrH rfcf QH* 
 of the thought conceived, cannot be too much commended. 
 . . . They [the poems] combine depth__of_ insight with a 
 most exquisite simplicity of phrase. . . . Worldlings 
 may sneer at the simplicity of some of his delineations of rural 
 life, but they contain descriptions which for simplicity and 
 truth ... can hardly be excelled." E. P. Whipple. 
 
462 WORDSWORTH 
 
 " Our language owes him for the habitual purity and absti- 
 nence of his style, and we who speak it for having emboldened 
 us to take delight in simple things and to trust ourselves to 
 our own instincts. . . . Wordsworth's better utterances 
 have the bare sincerity . . . that belongs to the grand 
 simplicities of the Bible. . . . Certainly a great part of 
 him will perish, but because too easily understood." Lowell. 
 
 " He chooses low and rustic life, because in that condition 
 the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and 
 permanent forms of nature. . . . He has a predilection 
 for a style the most remote from the false and showy splen- 
 dor which he wished to explode, an austere purity of lan- 
 guage, both grammatically and logically. . . . No other 
 man has so steadily asserted the dignity of virtue and of sim- 
 plicity. ' ' Coleridge. 
 
 " He chooses to depict people of humble life because, being 
 nearer to nature, they are on the whole more impassioned." 
 Walter Pater. 
 
 " What is most precious in our common human nature 
 seemed to him to be whatever is most simple, primitive, and 
 permanent. . . . What is best in language are those sim- 
 ple, stirring, and living forms of speech." Edward Dowden. 
 
 " No poet ever drew from simpler sources than Wordsworth, 
 but none ever made so much out of so little. . . . He 
 can deal with facts only when they are simple enough to em- 
 body but a single idea. . . . His ' plain imagination and 
 severe,' as he himself calls it." K. H. Hutton. 
 
 " There is in them [Wordsworth's poems] the freshness, 
 the ethereality, the innocent brightness of a new-born day. ' ' 
 /. C. Shairp. 
 
 " It was his theory of poetic diction that it should be that 
 which men commonly use when in rustic life they express 
 themselves simply. ... I cannot but think that the ele- 
 ment of grandeur of style flowed largely from the solemn sim- 
 plicity." Stopjord Brooke. 
 
WORDSWORTH 463 
 
 " The result [of Wordsworth's effort] was full of simplicity, 
 sincerity, beneficence. . . . His purpose was to bring 
 men's minds back to simplicity in subject and language. 
 . . . The simplicity of his subjects and of his manner, too, 
 passes into triviality the simplicity of his style into poverty. 
 . . . He undertook the mission of rehabilitating simplicity, 
 as well in tone as in feeling. . . . Never has there been 
 expressed as a whole with such puissant simplicity . . . 
 sentiments which Nature awakes." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 11 Wordsworth owed much to Burns and to a style of per- 
 fect plainness. . . . He can and will treat such a subject 
 with nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere 
 naturalness. ' ' Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "His works are matchless for their power and simplicity 
 and noble beauty. . . . Wordsworth has a fearless reli- 
 ance on the simple forces of expression in contrast to the more 
 ornate ones. . . . He accepted it as his mission to openN. 
 the eyes and widen the thoughts of his countrymen and to \ 
 teach them to discern in the humblest and most unexpected 
 forms the presence of what was kindred to what they had long / 
 recognized as the highest and greatest." R. W. Church. _^X 
 
 " There is no studied phrase -making, no falsetto, . . . 
 all simple and pure soul. . . . He gladly returns to the 
 simple produce of the common day. . . . Wordsworth 
 used the language of common life. . . . The language is 
 so clear and simple that a child may understand it, yet so pure 
 and true that the ripest minds can hardly fail to relish it. 
 . . . His is a style of beauty which is most adorned by 
 being wholly unadorned. . . . Strong was his passion 
 for severe purity and solidity of form." H. N. Hudson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " From his sixth year the boy of whom I speak 
 In summer tended cattle on the hills ; 
 But through the inclement and the perilous days 
 
464 WORDSWORTH 
 
 Of long-continuing winter he repaired, 
 
 Equipped with satchel, to a school that stood 
 
 Sole building on a mountain's dreary edge, 
 
 Remote from view of city spire or sound 
 
 Of minster clock. From that bleak tenement 
 
 He many an evening to his distant home 
 
 In solitude returning, saw the hills 
 
 Grow larger in the darkness ; all alone, 
 
 Beheld the stars come out above his head, 
 
 And travelled through the wood with no one near 
 
 To whom he might confess the things he saw." 
 
 The Excursion. 
 
 " The dew was falling fast, the stars began to blink ; 
 
 I heard a voice ; it said, ' Drink, pretty creature, drink ! ' 
 
 And looking o'er the hedge, before me I espied 
 
 A snow-white mountain lamb with a maiden at its side. 
 
 " Nor sheep nor kine were near ; the lamb was all alone, 
 And by a slender cord was tethered to a stone ; 
 With one knee on the grass did the little maiden kneel 
 While to that mountain-lamb she gave its evening meal." 
 
 The Pet Lamb. 
 
 " It was a dreary morning when the wheels 
 Rolled over a wide plain o'erhung with clouds, 
 And nothing cheered our way till first we saw 
 The long-roofed chapel of King's College lift 
 Turrets and pinnacles in answering files, 
 Extended high above a dusky grove. 
 Advancing, we espied upon the road 
 A student clothed in gown and tasselled cap 
 Striding along as if o'ertasked by Time, 
 Or covetous of exercise and air ; 
 He passed nor was I master of my eyes 
 Till he was left an arrow's flight behind. 
 As near and nearer to the spot we drew, 
 It seemed to suck us in with an eddy's force." 
 
 Residence at Cambridge. 
 
WORDSWORTH 465 
 
 Profound Meditation Contemplation. " The 
 
 predominating characteristic of Wordsworth's mind is thought- 
 fulness, a thoughtfulness in which every faculty of his mind 
 and every disposition of his heart meet and mingle ; and the 
 result is an atmosphere of thought, giving a soft charm to all 
 the objects it surrounds and permeates. . . . The most 
 common exercise of his imagination is what we may call its 
 meditative action its still, calm, searching insight into spir- 
 itual truth and into the spirit of nature. In these, analysis 
 and reflection become imaginative, and the ' more than rea- 
 soning mind ' of the poet overleaps the bound of positive 
 knowledge. . . . He is not, in this meditative mood, a 
 mere moralizing dreamer, a vague and puerile rhapsodist, as 
 some have maliciously asserted, but a true poetic philosopher. 
 The intensity with which Wordsworth meditates has 
 done much to give him a reputation as a reasoner. 
 His nature is rather contemplative than impulsive." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 "One lesson, if men must have lessons, he conveys more 
 clearly than all, the supreme importance of contemplation in 
 the conduct of life. . . . Contemplation, impassioned 
 contemplation that is with Wordsworth the end in itself, the 
 perfect end. . . . And the meditative poet is, in reality, 
 only clearing the scene for the exhibition of emotion." 
 Walter Pater. 
 
 11 Meditation and sympathy were the two main strings of 
 his serene and stormless lyre. ... He could fill his 
 meditation with the spirit of a whole people." A. C. Swin- 
 burne. 
 
 " His imagination is most active when it is pervaded by 
 a calm yet intense and lofty spirit of meditation. 
 Meditation, imagination, and description bear everywhere 
 the impress of his own individuality, and appear to be the 
 characteristics of his poems. . . . He is not merely a 
 melodious writer or a powerful utterer of deep emotion but a 
 30 
 
466 WORDSWORTH 
 
 true philosopher. . . . Wordsworth's meditations upon 
 flowers or animal life are impressive because they have 
 been touched by this constant sympathy. ... He 
 finds lonely meditation so inspiring that he is too indifferent 
 to the troubles of less clear-sighted human beings." Leslie 
 Stephen. 
 
 " Wordsworth's poetry is great in thought. . . . He 
 himself has told us that his paramount aim was to be a philo- 
 sophic poet. ... He was a man of high philosophic 
 thought and high moral purpose. . . . He is England's 
 great philosophic, as Shakespeare is her great dramatic, and 
 Milton her great epic, poet. . . . With what unpre- 
 meditated grace he could suggest his philosophy in connec- 
 tion with everyday objects ! ' ' Aubrey De Vere. 
 
 " Though his poetry reads so transcendental, and is so 
 meditative, there never was a poet who was so little of a 
 dreamer as Wordsworth. . . . He uses human sorrow as 
 an influence to stir up his own meditative spirit. . . . 
 Contemplative as he was, his mind was too concentrated and 
 intense for general truth. . . . The ballads are not under- 
 stood unless . . . one enters into the contemplative tone 
 in which they were written." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 "The essence of Wordsworth's mind in poetry is contem- 
 plative imagination. . . . He is a meditative and inten- 
 sive poet as such admirable, perhaps unequalled." W. M. 
 Rossetti. 
 
 " He is first and foremost a philosophical thinker; a man 
 whose intention and purpose of life it was to think out for 
 himself, faithfully and seriously, the questions concerning 
 ' Man and Nature and Human Life.' . . . He is as much 
 in earnest as a prophet, and he holds himself as responsible 
 for obedience to its [the divine voice's] call and for its fulfil- 
 ment as a prophet." R. W. Church. 
 
 "Wordsworth was encumbered, as it were, by reflective- 
 ness of manner." /. C. Shairp. 
 
WORDSWORTH 467 
 
 "Few have ventured to send into the world essentially 
 meditative poems, which none but the thoughtful can enjoy." 
 T.N. Talfourd. 
 
 "He is given to meditation, and much contemptuous of 
 the unmeditative world and its noisy nothingness." Carlyle. 
 
 " Even the name of thinker but half suits him, he is the 
 contemplative man." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " He is essentially a man of inner feelings, that is, en- 
 grossed by the concerns of the soul. . . . The peace was 
 so great within him and around him that he could perceive 
 the imperceptible. ' ' Taine. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Absence and death, how differ they ? and how 
 Shall I admit that nothing can restore 
 What one short sigh so easily removed ? 
 Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought 
 Assist me, God, their boundaries to know, 
 O teach me calm submission to thy will ! " 
 
 Maternal Grief. 
 
 " Weak is the will of man, his judgment blind ; 
 Remembrance persecutes, and Hope betrays ; 
 Heavy is woe ; and joy, for human-kind, 
 A mournful thing, so transient is the blaze ! 
 Thus might he paint our lot of mortal days 
 Who wants the glorious faculty assigned 
 To elevate the more-than-reasoning mind 
 And color life's dark cloud with orient rays. 
 Imagination is that sacred power, 
 Imagination lofty and refined : 
 'Tis hers to pluck the amaranthine flower 
 Of faith, and round the sufferer's temples bind 
 Wreaths that endure affliction's heaviest shower, 
 And do not shrink from sorrow's keenest wind." 
 
 Sonnets. 
 
468 WORDSWORTH 
 
 " Yet may we not entirely overlook 
 The pleasure gathered from the rudiments 
 Of geometric science. Though advanced 
 In these inquiries, with regret I speak, 
 No farther than the threshold, there I found 
 Both elevation and composed delight : 
 With Indian awe and wonder, ignorance pleased 
 With its own struggles, did I meditate 
 On the relation those abstractions bear 
 To Nature's laws, and by what process led, 
 Those immaterial agents bow their heads 
 Duly to serve the mind of earth-born man ; 
 From star to star, from sphere to kindred sphere, 
 From system on to system without end." 
 
 The Prelude. 
 
 Love of Nature Appreciative Sympathy. 
 
 Wordsworth's poetry is great because of the extraordinary 
 power with which Wordsworth feels the joy offered to us in 
 nature, the joy offered to us in the simple elementary affec- 
 tions and duties, and because of the extraordinary power with 
 which, in case after case, he shows us this joy and renders it so 
 as to make us share it." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " It certainly was a great advance from Pope for a poet to 
 have < an appetite and a passion ' for external nature. . . . 
 The originality of the 'Lyrical Ballads ' consisted not so much 
 in an accurate observation of Nature as in an absolute com- 
 munion with her and an interpretation of the spirit of her 
 forms. . . . We have here that spiritualization of nature, 
 that mysterious sense of the Being pervading the whole uni- 
 verse of matter and mind, that feeling of the vital connection 
 between all the various forms and kinds of creation. 
 Wordsworth's nature grew to its spiritual stature by placing 
 his mind in direct contact with natural objects, passively re- 
 ceiving their impressions in the still hours of contemplation, 
 and bringing his own soul into such sweet relations to the 
 soul of nature as to 'see into the life of things.' The poet 
 
WORDSWORTH 469 
 
 tells us that the forms and colors of nature affected his youth 
 with ' dizzy raptures and aching joys ' that they were to 
 him ' as an appetite, and haunted him like a passion.' . . . 
 It is by the exercise of this power [the interpretative instinct] 
 that he spanned, as he believed, the gulf deep, wide, and 
 bottomless as science makes it which separates man from 
 Nature. Nature's forms interpret him to himself; her sym- 
 bols express his subtlest thoughts ; she has correspondences 
 for his most soaring aspirations, affinities for his most elevated 
 moods, answers for his deepest questionings. She explains to 
 him his own significance, and as with arrowy glance he passes 
 from grade to grade among the forms of nature, stripping 
 from each its accidents till his eye rests on its essential life, 
 he grasps her unity in the midst of her diversity ; he sees in 
 her wruat, from analogy to himself, he calls a soul ; he receives 
 mystic hints of personality ; he catches flashes from a living 
 will akin to his own. . . . He starts from the instinctive 
 feeling of childhood, the simple gladness mingled with vague 
 fear in the presence of Nature. . . . When instinct be- 
 comes reason and impulse principle, when the relationship is 
 consciously and intellectually realized, when, that is, Words- 
 worth perceives the reciprocal influence which he and Nature 
 exercise over each other, these unconscious feelings pass into 
 love." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " The ideal light which Wordsworth sheds but brings out 
 only more vividly the real heart of Nature, the innermost feel- 
 ing which is really there, and is recognized by Wordsworth's 
 eye in virtue of the kinship between Nature and his own 
 soul. . . . He was baptized with an effluence from on 
 high, consecrated to be the poet-priest of Nature's mys- 
 teries. . . . Even before school-time was past, Nature 
 had come to have a meaning and an attraction for him. . . . 
 And Wordsworth alone, adding the philosopher to the poet, 
 has speculated widely and deeply on the relation in which 
 Nature stands to the soul of man." -J. C. Shairp. 
 
47O WORDSWORTH 
 
 " He is not, and never can be, the world's poet, but the 
 poet of those who love solitude and solitary communion with 
 nature. ... In Wordsworth's love, nature is not second 
 but first; the poetic rill with him rises in the mountains." 
 T. N. Talfourd. 
 
 " This love of the nature to which he belongs, and which 
 is in him the fruit of wisdom and experience, gives to all of his 
 poetry a very peculiar, a very endearing, and, at the same 
 time, a very lofty character. ... He tunes his mind to 
 nature almost with a feeling of religious obligation." Pro- 
 fessor Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
 " He very early became aware of that sympathy with exter- 
 nal nature which so strongly marked his writings. . . . 
 He had early learned to watch and note in her [Nature] that 
 to which other eyes were blind." R. W. Church. 
 
 " The doctrine of the love of nature is generally regarded 
 as Wordsworth's great lesson to mankind. . . . There is 
 everywhere the sentiment in Wordsworth inspired by his be- 
 loved hills. . . . It is not so much the love of nature 
 pure and simple as of nature seen through the deepest human 
 feeling." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " Wordsworth's feeling for pastoral nature, and the depths 
 of sentiment which he can deduce from such scenes and the 
 lessons of humanity he can read to the heart of man, are things 
 in themselves for all time." R. H. Home. 
 
 11 Among the poets who have helped to cultivate this de- 
 light in the observation of natural appearances there is none 
 that deserves to be ranked before Wordsworth." David 
 Masson. 
 
 " In the ' Lyrical Ballads ' and the ' Excursion,' Mr. 
 Wordsworth appeared as the high-priest of a worship of which 
 nature was the idol. ... No poems have ever indicated 
 a more exquisite perception of the beauty of the outer world 
 or a more passionate love and reverence for that beauty." 
 Macaulay. 
 
WORDSWORTH 47 1 
 
 " He shows us, as no other man has done, the beauty, the 
 glory, the holiness of Nature. ... He spiritualizes for us 
 the outer world." Coleridge. 
 
 11 He had a human-heartedness about the love he bore to 
 objects. ... He loved rocks and brooks as one angel 
 might love another warm human feelings were connected 
 with them." Stopf or d Brooke. 
 
 " Wordsworth is as much ravished at the sight of a butter- 
 cup at his feet as at the rainbow on the horizon. . . . No 
 poet puts the reader so thoroughly in communion with nat- 
 ure. . . . He is the poet who has most profoundly felt 
 and most powerfully expressed the commerce of the soul with 
 Nature. " Edmond Scherer. 
 
 11 He threw himself not at the feet of Nature but straight- 
 way and right tenderly on her bosom." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I saw the spring return, and could rejoice, 
 In common with the children of her love, 
 Piping on boughs, or sporting on fresh fields, 
 Or boldly seeking pleasure nearer heaven 
 On wings that navigate cerulean skies. 
 So neither were complacency nor peace 
 Nor tender yearnings wanting for my good 
 Through these distracted times ; in Nature still 
 Glorying, I found a counterpoise in her, 
 Which, when the spirit of evil reached its height, 
 Maintained for me a secret happiness." The Prelude. 
 
 " Yes, I remember when the changeful earth 
 And twice five summers on my mind had stamped 
 The faces of the moving year, even then 
 I held unconscious intercourse with beauty 
 Old as creation, drinking in a pure 
 Organic pleasure from the silver wreaths 
 Of curling mist, or from the level plain 
 Of waters colored by impending clouds. 
 
4/2 WORDSWORTH 
 
 Even while mine eye hath moved o'er many a league 
 Of shining water, gathering as it seemed 
 Through every hair-breadth in that field of light 
 New pleasure like a bee among the flowers." 
 
 The Prelude. 
 
 " I wandered lonely as cloud 
 
 That floats on high o'er vales and hills, 
 When all at once I saw a crowd, 
 
 A host of golden daffodils ; 
 Beside the lake, beneath the trees, 
 Fluttering and dancing in the breeze. 
 
 " Continuous as the stars that shine 
 
 And twinkle on the milky way, 
 They stretched in never-ending line 
 
 Along the margin of a bay : 
 Ten thousand saw I at a glance, 
 Tossing their heads in sprightly dance. 
 
 " The waves beside them danced ; but they 
 
 Outdid the sparkling waves in glee : 
 A poet could not be but gay 
 
 In such a jocund company : 
 I gazed and gazed but little thought 
 What wealth to me the show had brought." 
 
 ) i 9? The Daffodils. 
 
 4. Self-Reflection Self-Esteem." He early con- 
 ceived himself to be, and through life was confirmed by cir- 
 cumstances in the faith that he was, a ' dedicated spirit/ a 
 state of mind likely to further an intense but at the same time 
 one-sided development of the intellectual. . . . The same 
 mental necessities of a solitary life . . . had made him 
 also studious of the movements of his own mind and the mu- 
 tual interaction and dependence of the external and the inter- 
 nal universe. . . . Wordsworth had that self-trust which 
 in the man of genius is sublime and in the man of talent in- 
 sufferable. He was the historian of Wordsworth- 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 473 
 
 shire. . . . Study and self-culture did much for him, but 
 they never quite satisfied him that he was capable of making 
 a mistake." Lowell. 
 
 " Of the transcendent unlimited there was to this critic 
 [Wordsworth] probably but one specimen known Words- 
 worth himself." David Mas son. 
 
 " None of all the great poets was ever so persuaded of his 
 capacity to understand and his ability to explain how best 
 work was done." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " In Wordsworth we find a personal and a patriotic egoism, 
 a pompousness, a self-importance in dwelling upon details that 
 have value chiefly for the poet." John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " Wordsworth's egoism was of an abstract kind, still it was 
 inartistic, a Wordsworthian form of effusiveness." Edward 
 Dow den. 
 
 " He had undoubtedly a high opinion of his own powers 
 and performances ; and not only this but also a habit of self- 
 study and self-concentration, which kept him talking a good 
 deal about himself." W. M. Rossetti. 
 
 " Wordsworth is a moral critic of men rather than a de- 
 lineator of character. When he takes peddlers and potters for 
 heroes, they are not those of real life, but peddlers and potters 
 after a type in his own imagination. And even then they have 
 but little congruity except that which comes from the didactic 
 unity of their acts and discourses. Ever aiming at man in the 
 simplicity of his nature, all that can be said of his characters 
 is that they are not men but man man after Wordsworth's 
 own image." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "An intense intellectual egotism swallows up everything. 
 All other interests are absorbed in the deeper inter- 
 est of his own thoughts, and find the same level." William 
 Hazlitt. 
 
 11 He is eminently and humanly expansive, 
 spreading his infinite egotism over all the objects of his con- 
 templation . ' ' Mrs. Browning. 
 
474 WORDSWORTH 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " When, as becomes a man who would prepare 
 For such an arduous work, I through myself 
 Make rigorous inquisition, the report 
 Is often cheering ; for I neither seem 
 To lack that first great gift, the vital soul, 
 Nor general truths, which are themselves a sort 
 Of elements and agents under-powers, 
 Subordinate helpers of the living mind : 
 Nor am I naked of external things, 
 Forms, images, nor numerous other aids 
 Of less regard, though won perhaps with toil, 
 And needful to build up a poet's praise." 
 
 The Prelude. 
 
 " Still glides the stream, and shall forever glide ; 
 The Form remains, the Function never dies; 
 While we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise, 
 We Men, who in our morn of youth defied 
 The elements, must vanish ; be it so ! 
 Enough, if something from our hands have power 
 To live, and act, and serve the future hour ; 
 And if, as toward the silent tomb we go, 
 Through love, through hope, and faith's transcendent dower, 
 We feel that we are greater than we know." After-Thought. 
 
 " My heart leaps up when I behold 
 
 A rainbow in the sky : 
 So was it when my life began ; 
 So is it now I am a man ; 
 So be it when I shall grow old, 
 
 Or let me die. 
 
 The Child is father of the Man ; 
 And I could wish my days to be 
 Bound each to each by natural piety." 
 
 The Rainbow. 
 
 5. Delicate Sense of Sound. " Wordsworth mastered 
 the secret alphabet by which man converses with nature, and 
 
WORDSWORTH 475 
 
 to his soul she spoke an audible language. Indeed, his ear was 
 even more acute than his mind's eye; and no poet has excelled 
 him in the subtle perception of the most remote relations of 
 tone." Lowell. 
 
 ' ' Wordsworth is rather a listener than a seer. He hears 
 unearthly tones rather than sees unearthly shapes. The vague- 
 ness and indistinctness of the impression which the most 
 beautiful and sublime passages of his works leave upon the 
 mind is similar to that which is conveyed by the most ex- 
 quisite music. . . . Few have exceeded him in the 
 exquisite delicacy of his sense of sound." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " With him metre is but an additional, accessory grace 
 on that deeper music of words and sounds. . . . Subtle 
 and sharp as he is in the outlining of visible imagery, he is the 
 most subtle and delicate of all in the noting of sounds. 
 This placid life matured in him an unusual innate 
 sensibility to natural sights and sounds. . . . That he 
 awakened a ' sort of thought in sense ' is Shelley's just criti- 
 cism.' ' Walter Pater. 
 
 "He has vividly acute senses, and delights in the mere 
 physical use of them. . . . The sense of hearing was the 
 finest, a biographer states." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 "The music of some few almost incomparable passages 
 seems to widen and deepen the capacity of the sense for recep- 
 tion of the sublimest harmonies." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 "These verses sustain the serious thought by their grave 
 harmony, as a motet accompanies meditation or prayer. They 
 resemble the grand and monotonous music of the organ." 
 Taine. 
 
 " Considered as to composition merely, they [Words- 
 worth's odes] are perfect; the music flows on like a stream, 
 or rolls like a river, or expands like the sea, according as the 
 thought is beautiful or majestic or sublime. ' ' Professor 
 Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
476 WORDSWORTH 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The sun has long been set, 
 
 The stars are out by twos and threes, 
 
 The little birds are piping yet 
 
 Among the bushes and the trees ; 
 
 There's a cuckoo and one or two thrushes, 
 
 And a far-off wind that rushes, 
 
 And a sound of water that gushes ; 
 
 And the cuckoo's sovereign cry 
 
 Fills all the hollow of the sky. 
 
 Who would * go parading ' 
 
 In London, and ' masquerading,' 
 
 On such a night of June 
 
 With that beautiful soft half-moon, 
 
 On all these innocent blisses ? 
 
 On such a night as this is ! " Impromptu. 
 
 " A flock of sheep that leisurely pass by, 
 One after one ; the sound of rain and bees 
 Murmuring ; the fall of rivers, winds, and seas, 
 Smooth fields, white sheets of water, and pure sky ; 
 I have thought of all by turns, and yet do lie 
 Sleepless ; and soon the small birds' melodies 
 Must hear, first uttered from my orchard trees ; 
 And the first cuckoo's melancholy cry." To Sleep. 
 
 " Behold her, single in the field, 
 Yon solitary Highland lass ! 
 Reaping and singing to herself ; 
 Stop here, or gently pass ! 
 Alone she cuts and binds the grain 
 And sings a melancholy strain. 
 Oh listen ! for the vale profound 
 Is overflowing with the sound. 
 
 " No nightingale did ever chaunt 
 More welcome notes to weary bands 
 Of travellers in some shady haunt 
 Among Arabian sands ; 
 
WORDSWORTH 4/7 
 
 A voice so thrilling ne'er was heard 
 In spring-time from the cuckoo bird, 
 Breaking the silence of the seas 
 Among the farthest Hebrides." 
 
 The Solitary Reaper. 
 
 6. Moral Elevation. " He is a great Christian moral- 
 ist and teacher. . . . His gravity and moral aim are Mr. 
 Wordsworth's most prevailing characteristics. . . . Words- 
 worth is a spiritual singer, a high religious singer, and none 
 the less holy because he stands firmly still to reason among 
 the tossing of the censers." R. H. Home. 
 
 " In many poems we find the poet spiritualizing the familiar 
 appearances and common facts of earth. . . . The Christian 
 view of life and Nature does not at first receive the promi- 
 nence which is its due. But under the pressure of sorrow he 
 more and more turned to the Christian consolations. . . . 
 He bids his sister ... to look for no consolation from 
 earthly sources, but to seek it in that purer faith. 
 The sanctifying effect of sorrow on the heroine is, as Words- 
 worth himself says, the point on which the whole moral inter- 
 est of the poem [' Margaret '] hinges. . . . The heroine 
 knows that her duty is but ' To abide the shock, and finally 
 secure o'er grief and pain a triumph pure.' " J. C. Shairp. 
 
 " He has succeeded in combining his morality with more 
 than ordinary beauty of poetical form. . . . It is by 
 obedience to the stern law-giver, Duty, that flowers gain their 
 fragrance and that the ' inmost ancient heavens ' preserve their 
 freshness and strength. . . . Wordsworth's favorite les- 
 son is the possibility of turning grief and disappointment to 
 account. ... In the ' White Doe of Rylstone ' every- 
 thing succeeds so far as it is moral and spiritual." Leslie 
 Stephen. 
 
 "Is it only the matter of the universe which by itself is 
 dead? No, he answered. Matter is animated by a soul, and 
 it is this soul that thrills to meet me. . . . For there are 
 
478 WORDSWORTH 
 
 times when the sense of the spiritual life in Nature becomes so 
 dominant that the material world fades away, and we feel as 
 if we ourselves were pure spirit. . . . What is it, then, to 
 which we speak, with whom we have communion ? Not 
 with Nature . . . but with the spirit of the God who 
 abides as Life in all. All this may not be theological, but it 
 is distinctly religious. . . . The religion of Wordsworth 
 is the noblest we possess in our poetry, and the healthiest. 
 ... It is God, then, who unites Nature to us and directs 
 her teaching, it is his life acting on ours. A wonderful pict- 
 ure this young and solitary creature living in communion 
 with the Being of the World. . . . And the action of 
 all in Wordsworth's deep religion was to lead him, at last, to 
 reach the point marked out for him by God." Stopford 
 Brooke. 
 
 "He is the most spiritual and the most spiritualizing of 
 all English poets." H. N. Hudson. 
 
 " It [Wordsworth's poetry] could have arisen from no mind 
 in which moral beauty had not been organized into moral 
 character. . . . As we pause thoughtfully before some 
 of the majestic fabrics of his genius, they seem to wear the 
 look of eternity." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " His works are nothing else than the celebration of the 
 mysteries of this religion." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 " Rare peculiarities of character assisted him his keen 
 spiritual courage and his stern spiritual frugality." ft. H. 
 Hutton. 
 
 "He reads the poems of Wordsworth without understand- 
 ing them who does not find in them the noblest incentives to 
 faith in man and in the grandeur of his destiny." Lowell. 
 
 " In his eyes, what constitutes our worth is the integrity of 
 our conscience ; science itself is only profound when it pene- 
 trates moral life." Taine. 
 
WORDSWORTH 479 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Milton ! thou shouldst be living at this hour : 
 England hath need of thee : she is a fen 
 Of stagnant waters ; altar, sword, and pen, 
 Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, 
 Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
 Of inward happiness. We are selfish men ; 
 Oh, raise us up, return to us again ! 
 And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power." 
 
 To Milton . 
 
 " Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting : 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar : 
 Not in entire forgetfulness, 
 And not in utter nakedness, 
 But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
 From God, who is our home : 
 Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
 Shadows of the prison-house begin to close 
 
 Upon the growing boy, 
 But he beholds the light, and whence it flows ; 
 
 He sees it in his joy." Ode on Immortality. 
 
 " Blest statesman he, whose mind's unselfish will 
 
 Leaves him at ease among grand thoughts : whose eye 
 
 Sees that, apart from magnanimity, 
 
 Wisdom exists not ; nor the humbler skill 
 
 Of Prudence, disentangling good and ill 
 
 With patient care. What tho' assaults run high, 
 
 They daunt not him who holds his ministry, 
 
 Resolute, at all hazards, to fulfil 
 
 Its duties ; prompt to move, but firm to wait, 
 
 Knowing things rashly sought are rarely found. 
 
 That, for the functions of an ancient State 
 
 Strong by her charters, free because imbound, 
 
 Servant of Providence, not slave of Fate 
 
 Perilous is sweeping change, all chance unsound." 
 
 Sonnets to Liberty. 
 
480 WORDSWORTH 
 
 }/] Heaviness Dulness. " The one element of great- 
 ness which ' The Excursion' possesses is indisputably its 
 heaviness. . . . His thought seems often to lean upon a 
 word too weak to bear its weight. . . . Even as a 
 teacher he is often too much of a pedagogue, and is apt to 
 forget that poetry instructs not by precept and inculcation, but 
 by hints and indirections and suggestions." Lowell. 
 
 " Who that values his works most has not felt the intrusion 
 there from time to time of something tedious and prosaic ? " 
 Walter Pater. 
 
 " There is, I should say, not seldom a matter-of-factness in 
 certain of the poems. ... In this class I comprise occa- 
 sional prolixity, repetition, and an eddying instead of a pro- 
 gression of thought. . . . It is the awkwardness and 
 strength of Hercules with the distaff of Omphale." Coleridge. 
 
 " Whatever there may be of interest or pathos in the record 
 of Margaret's troubles, is fairly swamped in a watery world of 
 words as monotonous and colorless as drizzling mist." A. C. 
 Swinburne. 
 
 " It is easy to find them [his works] oppressive and to com- 
 plain of him as heavy and wearisome."^. W. Church. 
 
 " There are times when this moralizing tendency leads him 
 to the regions of the namby-pamby or sheer prosaic plati- 
 tude. " Leslie Stephen. 
 
 1 ' When he seeks to have a style he falls into ponderosity 
 and pomposity." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "Wordsworth, the prolific and discursive poet, 
 expands himself in slow and boundless strides. . . . They 
 [his poems] are a little heavy, a little monotonous, and it is 
 hard to read them without ennui." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And now, at last, 
 
 From perils manifold, with some small wealth 
 Acquired by traffic 'mid the Indian isles, 
 

 WORDSWORTH 481 
 
 To his paternal home he is returned, 
 
 With a determined purpose to resume 
 
 The life he had lived there." The Brothers. 
 
 11 The pair, whose infant she was bound to nurse, 
 Forbade her all communion with her own : 
 Week after week the mandate they enforced, 
 So near ! yet not allowed, upon that sight 
 To fix her eyes alas ! 'twas hard to bear ! 
 But worse affliction must be borne far worse ; 
 For 'tis Heaven's will that, after a disease 
 Begun and ended within three days' space, 
 Her child should die ; as Ellen now exclaimed, 
 Her own deserted child ! Once, only once, 
 She saw it in that mortal malady ; 
 And, on the burial day, could scarcely gain 
 Permission to attend its obsequies." The Excursion. 
 
 " The alarm 
 
 Ceased, when she learned through what mishap I came, 
 And by what help had gained those distant fields. 
 Drawn from her cottage, on that aery height, 
 Bearing a lantern in her hand, she stood, 
 Or paced the ground to guide her husband home, 
 By that unweary signal kenned afar ; 
 An anxious duty ! which the lofty site, 
 Traversed but by a few irregular paths, 
 Imposes, whensoe'er untoward chance 
 Detains him after his accustomed hour." The Excursion. 
 
 8. Imaginative Power. "Lastly and pre-eminently I 
 challenge for this poet the gift of imagination in the highest 
 and strictest sense of the word. . . . Without his depth 
 of feeling and his imaginative power, his sense would want 
 its vital warmth. ... In imaginative power he stands 
 nearest of all modern writers to Shakespeare and Milton." 
 Coleridge. 
 
 " The imaginative faculty is that with which Wordsworth is 
 
482 WORDSWORTH 
 
 most eminently gifted. . . . The imagination of Words- 
 worth has given to the external universe a charm which has 
 never [before] been shed over it." T. N. Talfourd. 
 
 "The reader will notice that, although the style becomes 
 almost transfigured by the intense and brooding imagination, 
 the diction is still as simple as prose. . . . It is instinct 
 with the most refined and subtle imagination. . . . To 
 him belongs the praise of giving its distinctive character to 
 the imaginative literature of his age. . . . It is evident 
 that the fineness of his imagination requires thought and atten- 
 tion to be appreciated. . . . ' Peter Bell ' and The 
 Excursion ' are works replete with elevation of thought and 
 grandeur of imagination." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "His imagination lends life and feeling to the bare trees, 
 peoples the tracts of air. . . . No one has shown the 
 same imagination in raising trifles into importance."- Will- 
 iam Hazlitt. 
 
 " None but Wordsworth has ever so completely transmuted 
 by an imaginative spirit unsatisfied yearnings into eternal 
 truths." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " His imagination was a treasure-house whence he drew 
 forth things new and old, the old as fresh as the new." 
 /. C. Shairp. 
 
 " He hates science because it regards facts without the 
 imaginative coloring." Leslie Stephen. 
 
 " Every page of his poetry abounds with instances of im- 
 agination." David Mas son. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " A few are near him still and now the sky, 
 He hath it to himself 'tis all his own. 
 O most ambitious Star ! an inquest wrought 
 Within me when I recognized thy light ; 
 A moment 1 was startled at the sight : 
 And, while I gazed, there came to me a thought 
 
WORDSWORTH 483 
 
 That I might step beyond my natural race 
 
 As thou seem'st now to do ; might one day trace 
 
 Some ground not mine ; and, strong her strength above, 
 
 My Soul, an apparition in the place, 
 
 Tread there with steps which no one shall reprove." 
 
 Lines on Revisiting Tintern Abbey. 
 
 " O Nightingale ! thou surely art 
 A creature of a ' fiery heart : ' 
 These notes of thine they pierce and pierce ; 
 Tumultuous harmony and fierce ! 
 Thou sing'st as if the God of wine 
 Had helped thee to a valentine ; 
 A song in mockery and despite 
 Of shades and dews and silent night 
 And steady bliss and all the loves 
 Now sleeping in these peaceful groves.'' 
 
 The Simplon Pass. 
 
 " Then up I rose, 
 
 And dragged to earth both branch and bough, with crash 
 And merciless ravage : and the shady nook 
 Of hazels, and the green and mossy bower, 
 Deformed and sullied, patiently gave up 
 Their quiet being : and, unless I now 
 Confound my present feelings with the past, 
 Ere from the mutilated bower I turned 
 Exulting, rich beyond the wealth of kings, 
 I felt a sense of pain when I beheld 
 The silent trees, and saw the intruding sky. 
 Then, dearest maiden, move along these shades 
 In gentleness of heart ; with gentle hand 
 Touch for there is a spirit in the woods." Nutting. 
 
 9. Sympathy with Humanity. " As the poet of suffer- 
 ing and of sympathy with suffering, his station is unequalled 
 in its kind. . . . Wordsworth at his best is sublime by 
 the very force of his tenderness. . . . May his immortal 
 words of sympathy find immortal application to himself." 
 A. C. Swinburne. 
 
484 WORDSWORTH 
 
 " The chief characteristic of Wordsworth's poetry consists 
 in the profound insight, wide sympathy, and vital force with 
 which it presents us to the human nature. . . . Words- 
 worth's poems are profound illustrations of the ' Humanities.' 
 It is the broad rough life of man that confronts us, not the 
 life of the sentimentalist." Aubrey De Vere. 
 
 " It was here [at Hawkshead in Lancashire] that Words- 
 worth learned that homely humanity which gives such depth 
 and sincerity to his poems. . . . Nothing could obliter- 
 ate the deep trace of that early training which enables him to 
 speak directly to the primitive instincts of man. ... He 
 has won for himself a secure immortality ... by a 
 homely sincerity of human sympathy which reaches the hum- 
 blest heart. ' ' Lowell. 
 
 "It was in this free pastoral life that the roots of 
 Wordsworth's love for man struck deep. ... He was 
 able ... to grasp the higher view of manhood and to 
 love mankind. . . . He had compassion on the im- 
 moral. He saw in the idiots those whose life was hidden 
 in God. ... In wrath and pity he threw himself into 
 the cause of distressed nationality. . . . This was his 
 work, to make unworldly men listen to the beating of the 
 heart of natural humanity. . . . He wrote with a view 
 to show that men who do not wear fine clothes may feel 
 deeply." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 "His poetry meets the want of actual life consolation, 
 help, sympathy. ... In this intense spiritualism, mingled 
 with the mildest and sweetest humanity, we see the ... 
 power of Wordsworth. . . . They [his poems] will exert 
 a vast influence upon society through the diffusion of just and 
 beautiful sentiments of benevolence and charity. 
 Mercy, justice, wisdom, piety, love, freedom, in their full 
 beauty and grandeur are the subjects of his song ; and we 
 have yet to learn that these can subsist with the slightest in- 
 jury done to a human being." E. P. Whipple. 
 
WORDSWORTH 48$ 
 
 "The lower a being is in the scale, the more he labors to 
 awaken our sympathy in its favor. . . ' . The experience 
 of life opens the heart to a kind of affection for all created 
 things. ' ' Edmond Scherer. 
 
 "To console the afflicted, to add sunshine to daylight by 
 making the happy happier, this was his purpose." R. W. 
 Church. 
 
 "Wordsworth is a feeling man; ... he knows grief 
 by sympathy rather than by suffering." Mrs. Browning. 
 
 " One will be struck with the author's knowledge of the 
 human heart and the power he possesses of stirring up its deep- 
 est and gentlest sympathies." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 " He sees nothing loftier than human hopes, nothing deeper 
 than the human heart." William Hazlitt. 
 
 "It is the superior depth of genuine sincerity and truth in 
 Wordsworth's humanity that renders his poems indestructi- 
 ble." John Addington Symonds. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Unoccupied by sorrow of its own, 
 
 His heart lay open ; and by Nature tuned 
 
 And constant disposition of his thoughts 
 
 To sympathy with man, he was alive 
 
 To all that was enjoyed, where'er he went, 
 
 And all that was endured ; for in himself 
 
 Happy, and quiet in his cheerfulness, 
 
 He had no painful pressure from without 
 
 That made him turn about from wretchedness 
 
 With coward fears. He could afford to suffer 
 
 With those whom he saw suffer. Hence it came 
 
 That in our best experience he was rich 
 
 And in the wisdom of our daily life." The Excursion. 
 
 " Heart-pleased we smile upon the bird 
 If seen, and with like pleasure stirred 
 Commend him, when he's only heard. 
 
486 WORDSWORTH 
 
 But small and fugitive our gain 
 
 Compared with hers who long hath lain, 
 
 With languid limbs and patient head, 
 
 Reposing on a lone sick bed ; 
 
 Where now she daily hears a strain 
 
 That cheats her of too busy cares, 
 
 Eases her pain, and helps her prayers ; 
 
 And who but this dear bird beguiled 
 
 The fever of that pale-faced child ; 
 
 Now cooling, with his passing wing, 
 
 Her forehead, like a breeze of spring : 
 
 Recalling now, with descant soft, 
 
 Shed round her pillow from aloft, 
 
 Sweet thoughts of angels hovering nigh 
 
 And the invisible sympathy 
 
 Of * Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and John, 
 
 Blessing the bed she lies upon ? ' " The Redbreast. 
 
 " Glad sight wherever new with old 
 
 Is joined through some dear home-born tie ; 
 The life of all that we behold 
 
 Depends upon that mystery. 
 Vain is the glory of the sky, 
 
 The beauty vain of field and grove, 
 Unless, while with admiring eye 
 
 We gaze, we also learn to love." To a Lady. 
 
 10. Early Puerility Exaggeration of the Triv- 
 ial. This characteristic is one for which Wordsworth has 
 been severely and sometimes justly criticised. 
 
 " Wordsworth's true simplicity, the simplicity which came 
 from writing close to the truth of things and making the word 
 rise out of the idea conceived, cannot be too highly com- 
 mended ; but in respect to his false simplicity for the sake of 
 being simple, we can only say that it has given some point to 
 the sarcasm, 'that Chaucer writes like a child but Words- 
 worth writes childishly.' . . . The occasional puerilities 
 of expression in his early poems are not sufficient to break the 
 charm they exert on susceptible minds." E. P. Whipple. 
 
WORDSWORTH 487 
 
 " Work altogether inferior, work quite uninspired, flat, and 
 dull, is produced by him with evident unconsciousness of its 
 depths, and he presents it to us with the same faith and assur- 
 ance as his best work." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " His taste for simplicity is evinced by sprinkling up and 
 down his interminable declamations a few descriptions of 
 baby-houses and of old hats and wet brims." Francis Jeffrey. 
 
 11 Half of his pieces are childish, almost foolish. . . . 
 All the poets in the world could not reconcile us to so much 
 tedium. . . . This sentimental prettiness quickly grows 
 insipid, and the style by its factitious simplicity renders it 
 still more insipid." Taine. 
 
 11 His simplicity is not infrequently childish ; his calmness, 
 stagnation; his pathos, puerility." If. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And he is lean and he is sick : 
 
 His body, dwindled and awry, 
 Rests upon ankles swollen and thick ; 
 His legs are thin and dry ; 
 
 " Few months of life he has in store, 
 
 As he to you will tell, 
 For still, the more he works, the more 
 Do his weak ankles swell." Simon Lee. 
 
 11 There's George Fisher, Charles Fleming, and Reginald Shore, 
 Three rosy-cheeked school-boys, the highest not more 
 Than the height of a counsellor's bag ; 
 To the top of Great How did it please them to climb, 
 And there they built up, without mortar or lime, 
 A man on the peak of the crag. 
 
 " They built him of stones gathered up as they lay : 
 Thy built him and christened him all in one day, 
 An urchin both vigorous and hale ; 
 And so without scruple they called him Ralph Jones." 
 
 Rural Architecture. 
 
488 WORDSWORTH 
 
 ".All, all is silent rocks and woods 
 All still and silent far and near ! 
 Only the ass, with motion dull, 
 Upon the pivot of his skull 
 Turns round his long left ear. 
 
 Upon the beast the sapling rings ; 
 
 His lank sides heaved, his limbs they stirred; 
 
 He gave a groan, and then another, 
 
 Of that which went before the brother, 
 
 And then he gave a third." Peter Bell. 
 
 ii. Freshness Originality. "Wordsworth is the 
 most original poet now [1830] living. . . . His poetry 
 is not external but internal ; it does not depend upon tradition 
 or story or old song ; he furnishes it from his own mind and 
 is his own subject." William Hazlitt. 
 
 "The choice of his characters from humble and rustic life 
 was caused partly from the original make of his nature. 
 . . . He was the first who both in theory and in practice 
 shook off the trammels of the so-called poetic diction which 
 had tyrannized over English poetry for more than a century. 
 . . . What contemporary poet has left to his country such 
 a gallery of new and individual portraits as a permanent pos- 
 session?" J. C. Shairp. 
 
 " There is no poet who gives to his poems so perfectly a 
 new birth as Wordsworth. ... In his poems there will 
 ever be a spring of something even fresher than poetic life a 
 pure, deep well of solitary joy." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " How pure and fresh his poetry is ! how healthy and nat- 
 ural, but how true to Nature and how near to God ! " Stop- 
 ford Brooke. 
 
 " No frequency of perusal can deprive his poems of their 
 freshness. ' The River Duddon ' is singularly pure in style 
 and fresh in conception. . . . This atmosphere is some- 
 times sparklingly clear, as if the air and dew and sunshine of a 
 

 WORDSWORTH 489 
 
 May morning had found a home in his imagination." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 " Nature herself seems, I say, to take the pen out of his 
 hand and to write for him with her own bare, sheer, penetrat- 
 ing power. ... He can and will treat a subject with 
 nothing but the most plain, first-hand, almost austere natural- 
 ness. ' ' Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Up with me ! up with me, into the clouds : 
 For thy song, Lark, is strong ; 
 Up with me, up with me, into the clouds ! 
 Singing, singing, 
 
 With clouds and sky about thee ringing, 
 Lift me, guide me, till I find 
 That spot that seems so to thy mind." 
 
 To a Sky-Lark. 
 
 " O blithe new-comer ! I have heard, 
 
 I hear thee and rejoice. 
 O Cuckoo ! shall I call thee bird, 
 Or but a wandering voice ? 
 
 " While I am lying on the grass 
 
 Thy twofold shout I hear ; 
 From hill to hill it seems to pass, 
 At once far off and near. 
 
 " Though bubbling only to the vale, 
 
 Of sunshine and of flowers, 
 Thou bringest unto me a tale 
 Of visionary hours. 
 
 " Thrice welcome, darling of the spring ! 
 
 Even yet thou art to me 
 No bird, but an invisible thing, 
 
 A voice, a mystery." 7b the Cuckoo. 
 
 " Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed 
 Their snow-white blossoms on my head, 
 With brightest sunshine round me spread 
 
490 WORDSWORTH 
 
 Of spring's unclouded weather, 
 In this sequestered nook how sweet 
 To sit upon my orchard seat ! 
 And birds and flowers once more to greet, 
 
 My last year's friends together." 
 
 The Green Linnet. 
 
 12. Pathos. " To many ' The Excursion ' will always 
 be dear for the pictures of mountain scenes and the pa- 
 thetic records of rural life which it contains. 
 For feelings, not on the surface but in the depth, pathos 
 pure and profound, what of modern verse can equal this 
 story ['The Excursion'] and that of Margaret?" J. C. 
 Shairp. 
 
 " The most especial and distinctive quality of his genius is 
 rather its pathetic than its meditative note." A. C. Swin- 
 burne. 
 
 " He sees images in his own words of man suffering amid 
 awful forms and powers. . . . He is the true forerunner 
 of the deepest and most passionate poetry of our own day." 
 Walter Pater. 
 
 " Nothing can exceed the pathos with which Wordsworth 
 can tell these simple local stories." David Masson. 
 
 " To me the pathos of Wordsworth is like the sweetness of 
 Michael Angelo. As the sweetness of Michael Angelo is 
 sweeter than that of other men because of his strength, so the 
 pathos of Wordsworth is the more moving because of the calm- 
 ness and reserve with which it is clothed. ... In mild 
 and philosophic pathos Wordsworth seems to me without a 
 compeer. ' ' Coleridge. 
 
 " The still, searching pathos of ' We Are Seven ' . . . 
 indicates a vision into the deepest sources of emotion." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " No one has displayed the same pathos in treating of the 
 simplest feelings of the heart." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " In 'We Are Seven/ indeed, the pathos overcomes the 
 
WORDSWORTH 49! 
 
 quaint familiarity of style, and embodies the touching senti- 
 ment with irresistible effect. ... He showed with Burns 
 how far deep down the pathetic and the tender go in life."- 
 ^?. W. Church. 
 
 "We often meet in his works little passages in which we 
 seem almost to contemplate the well-spring of pure emotion 
 and gentle pathos. ... No [other] poet has done such 
 justice to the depth and fulness of maternal love." T. N. 
 Talfourd. 
 
 " In this poem [" Margaret "] there is a profound pathos 
 swelling in volume to the end. . . . Pathos is a charac- 
 teristic of nearly all of Wordsworth's poems, but the tears 
 which it brings to the eyes are often those of gladness mingled 
 with regret." Aubrey De Vere. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thus they were calmed 
 
 And cheered ; and now together breathe fresh air 
 In open fields ; and when the glare of day 
 Is gone, and twilight to the mother's wish 
 Befriends the observance, readily they join 
 In walks whose boundary is the lost one's grave, 
 Which he with flowers hath planted, finding there 
 Amusement, where the Mother does not miss 
 Dear consolation, kneeling on the turf 
 In prayer, yet blending with that solemn rite 
 Of pious faith the vanities of grief ; 
 For such, by pitying angels and by spirits 
 Transferred to regions upon which the clouds 
 Of our weak nature rest not, must be deemed 
 Those willing tears and unforbidden sighs, 
 And all those tokens of a cherished sorrow, 
 Which, soothed and sweetened by the grace of Heaven 
 As now it is, seems to her own fond heart 
 Immortal as the love that gave it being." 
 
 Maternal Grief. 
 
49 2 WORDSWORTH 
 
 " Alas ! the fowls of heaven have wings, 
 
 And blasts of heaven will aid their flight ; 
 
 They mount how short a voyage brings 
 The wanderers back to their delight ! 
 
 Chains tie us down by land and sea ; 
 
 And wishes, vain as mine, may be 
 
 All that is left to comfort thee. 
 
 " Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan, 
 Maimed, mangled by inhuman men ; 
 
 Or thou upon a desert thrown 
 Inheritest the lion's den ; 
 
 Or hast been summoned to the deep, 
 
 Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep 
 
 An incommunicable sleep. 
 
 " Beyond participation lie 
 
 My troubles, and beyond relief : 
 If any chance to heave a sigh, 
 
 They pity me and not my grief. 
 Then come to me, my Son, or send 
 Some tidings, that my woes may end : 
 I have no other earthly friend." 
 
 The Affliction of Margaret. 
 
 " Unblest distinction ! showered on me 
 To bind a lingering life in chains : 
 
 All that could quit my grasp, or flee, 
 Is gone ; but not the subtle stains 
 
 Fixed in the spirit ; for even here 
 
 Can I be proud that jealous fear 
 Of what I was remains. 
 
 " A woman rules my prison's key ; 
 
 A sister Queen, against the bent 
 Of law and holiest sympathy, 
 
 Detains me, doubtful of the event ; 
 Great God, who feel'st for my distress, 
 My thoughts are all that I possess ; 
 Oh keep them innocent ! " 
 
 Lament of Mary Queen of Scots. 
 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 493 
 
 13. Didacticism. "To teach the young and the gra- 
 cious of every age to see, to think, and to feel . . . this 
 is his own account of the purpose of his poetry. 
 ' Every great poet,' he said, ' is a teacher; I wish either to 
 be considered as a teacher or as nothing.' " R. W. Church. 
 
 (t In what high vein can he write in whom the spirit of 
 prophecy is replaced by the spirit of mere teaching? 
 He wrote to impress the world with a sense of their [the 
 poor] dignity in suffering and the moral grandeur of their 
 honest poverty." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " His habit of seeking and finding lessons in the smallest 
 incidents of his walks passes into a didactic mania." Ed- 
 mond Scherer. 
 
 " Every little lyric ... is organically connected 
 with the long narrative and didactive poems." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 " He saw a grandeur, a beauty, a teaching in trivial events. 
 . . . In short, the poem [" The Excursion "] is as grave 
 and dull as a sermon." Tame. 
 
 " He does actually convey to the reader an extraordinary 
 wisdom in the things of practice." Walter Pater. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " There are in our existence spots of time, 
 That with distinct pre-eminence retain 
 A renovating virtue, whence, depressed 
 By false opinion and contentious thought, 
 Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight, 
 In trivial occupations, and the round 
 Of ordinary intercourse, our minds 
 Are nourished and invisibly repaired ; 
 A virtue by which pleasure is enhanced, 
 That penetrates, enables us to mount, 
 When high, more high, and lifts us up when fallen." 
 
 The Prelude. 
 
494 WORDSWORTH 
 
 " A piteous lot were it to flee from man 
 Yet not rejoice in nature. He whose hours 
 Are by domestic pleasures uncaressed 
 And unenlivened ; who exists whole years 
 Apart from benefits received or done 
 'Mid the transactions of the bustling crowd ; 
 Who neither hears nor feels a wish to hear 
 Of the world's interests such a one hath need 
 Of a quick fancy and an active heart, 
 That, for the day's consumption, books may yield 
 Food not unwholesome ; earth and air correct 
 His morbid humor, with delight supplied 
 Or solace, varying as the seasons change." 
 
 The Excursion. 
 
 " Fit retribution, by the moral code 
 
 Determined, lies beyond the State's embrace ; 
 
 Yet, as she may, for each peculiar case 
 
 She plants well-measured terrors in the road 
 
 Of wrongful acts. Downward it is and broad, 
 
 And, the main fear once doomed to banishment, 
 
 Far oftener then, bad ushering worse event, 
 
 Blood would be spilt that in his dark abode 
 
 Crime might lie better hid. And, should the change 
 
 Take from the horror due to a foul deed, 
 
 Pursuit and evidence so far must fail, 
 
 And, guilt escaping, passion then might plead 
 
 In angry spirits for her old free range, 
 
 And the ' wild justice of revenge' prevail." 
 
 Sonnets upon the Punishment of Death. 
 
 14. Grandeur Stateliness Serenity. " Words- 
 worth walks, . . . though he limps at times, with almost 
 as stately a step as Milton. ... I cannot but think that 
 the element of grandeur of style . . . flowed largely 
 from the solemn simplicity. . . . The power which in 
 Nature . . . made her hours of calm, produced calm in 
 him, and a certain love of calm in himself strengthened the 
 impression. ... He felt the loveliness and calm in the 
 

 WORDSWORTH 495 
 
 
 world as similar to moral loveliness and calm, and as age grew 
 on, his calmness deepened." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 1 ' In ' The Excursion ' we forget the poverty of the getting 
 up to admire the purity and elevation of the thought. 
 This book is like a Protestant temple, august, though bare and 
 monotonous. . . . They [his stanzas] resemble the grand 
 monotonous music of the organ." Taine. 
 
 A dream which reaches the ne plus ultra of sublimity 
 . expressly framed to illustrate the eternity. . . . 
 No describer so powerful or idealizing so magnificently what 
 he deals with, has been a spectator of parallel scenes." De 
 Quincey. 
 
 " He clothes the naked with beauty and grandeur. . . . 
 His mind seemed embued with the majesty and solemnity of 
 the objects around him." William Hazlitt. 
 
 " His diction never in his best works is deficient in splendor 
 and compass. ... In this faculty of awakening senti- 
 ments of grandeur, sublimity, beauty, affection, devotion, 
 . . . it would be difficult to find a parallel to Words- 
 worth. . . . He is above the tempests and turbulence of 
 life, and moves in regions where serenity is strength." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Serene will be our days and bright, 
 And happy will our nature be, 
 When love is an unerring light, 
 And joy its own security. 
 And they a blissful course may hold 
 Even now, who, not unwisely bold, 
 Live in the spirit of this creed ; 
 Yet seek thy firm support, according to their need." 
 
 Ode to Duty. 
 
 *' Child of the clouds ! remote from every taint 
 Of sordid industry thy lot is cast ; 
 Thine are the honors of the lofty waste ; 
 Not seldom, when with heat the valleys faint, 
 
WORDSWORTH 
 
 Thy handmaid Frost with spangled tissues quaint 
 Thy cradle decks ; to chant thy birth, thou hast 
 No meaner poet than the whistling Blast, 
 And Desolation is thy Patron-saint ! " 
 
 The River Duddon. 
 
 Child of loud -throated War ! the mountain stream 
 
 Roars in thy hearing ; but thy hour of rest 
 
 Is come, and thou art silent in thy age ; 
 
 Save when the wind sweeps by and sounds are caught 
 
 Ambiguous, neither wholly thine nor theirs. 
 
 Oh ! there is life that breathes not ; powers there are 
 
 That touch each other to the quick in modes 
 
 Which the gross world no sense hath to perceive, 
 
 No soul to dream of." Address to Kile hum Castle. 
 
EMERSON, 1803-1882 
 
 Biographical Outline. Ralph Waldo Emerson, born 
 in Boston, Mass., May 25, 1803, the second of five sons; 
 father pastor of the "First Church" (Congregational) of 
 Boston; Emerson enters the public grammar school in 1811 
 and the Boston Latin School soon afterward ; at the age of 
 eleven (1814) he is translating Virgil into English verse ; he is 
 fond, also, of Greek, history, and poetry ; he composes verses, 
 and thinks highly of " the idle books under the bench at the 
 Latin School; " he enters Harvard College in 1818, and is 
 graduated in 1821 ; he receives second prize for English com- 
 position in his Senior year, but gives little evidence of remark- 
 able ability while in college ; he joins his brother William in 
 conducting a private school at Boston, and later serves as 
 principal of an "Academy" at Chelmsford, now a part of 
 Lowell ; later he has a private school at Cambridge. 
 
 In 1823 he begins studying for the ministry under Dr. 
 Charming, afterward taking a course of lectures at the Har- 
 vard Divinity School ; owing to trouble with his eyes, he 
 takes no notes at the Divinity School, and is excused from the 
 examinations; Emerson wrote later, "If they had examined 
 me, they probably would not have let me preach at all ; " 
 in 1826 he is "approbated to preach" by the Middlesex 
 Association of Ministers ; he visits South Carolina and Florida 
 during the winter of 1827-28, and preaches several times at 
 Charleston and other places ; returning, he preaches temporar- 
 ily in several New England towns; in March, 1829, he is 
 ordained colleague of Dr. Ware in the " Second Church " of 
 Boston; in September, 1829, he marries Ellen Louisa 
 Tucker, who dies of consumption in February, 1832; in 
 32 497 
 
498 EMERSON 
 
 September, 1832, he preaches his famous sermon on the 
 Lord's Supper, expressing his scruples against administering 
 the same and announcing his intention, therefore, to resign 
 his office. 
 
 He visits Europe in 1833, making a tour of Sicily, Italy, 
 France, and England, and meeting Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
 Landor, De Quincey, and Carlyle ; he becomes a resident of 
 Concord in the summer of 1834, first occupying the " Old 
 Manse" of Hawthorne's novel; he begins lecturing in the 
 winter of 1833-34, giving three lectures treating of his Eu- 
 ropean experiences and two, respectively, on " Water" and 
 "The Relation of Man to the Globe;" during 1834 he 
 lectures on Michael Angelo, Milton, Luther, George Fox, 
 and Burke ; the first two of these lectures were published in 
 the North American Review for 1837-38 ; Emerson begins, 
 in May, 1834, his correspondence with Carlyle, which lasts 
 till 1872 ; in September, 1835, he marries Lydia Jackson, of 
 Plymouth, Mass.; during 1835 he gives ten lectures in Bos- 
 ton on "English Literature;" in 1836, twelve lectures on 
 "The Philosophy of History;" in 1837, ten lectures on 
 "Human Culture;" in April, 1836, he writes his great 
 "Commemoration Ode;" till 1838 he preaches frequently 
 as a "supply" at East Lexington, Mass.; he lectures on 
 "War" in 1837, and publishes anonymously in 1836 his 
 small book entitled "Nature," which Holmes calls "a re- 
 flective prose poem;" in August, 1837, he delivers his Phi 
 Beta Kappa oration at Cambridge, entitled " The American 
 Scholar;" on July 15, 1838, he delivers at Cambridge his 
 Divinity School Address, which excites severe criticism by 
 theologians and raises Emerson " to the importance of a here- 
 tic ; " in 1838-39 he gives ten lectures on "Human Life," 
 of which these titles "Love," "Demonology," and "The 
 Comic " remain in his published works ; he contributes, dur- 
 ing 1838 and 1839, the poems entitled " The Humble Bee " 
 and "To the Rhodora" to the Western Messenger (both 
 
EMERSON 499 
 
 poems written about 1823); in July, 1838, he lectures on 
 " Literary Ethics" at Dartmouth College; in December, 
 1838, Emerson writes to Carlyle that he has $22,000 draw- 
 ing six per cent, interest, besides his house, his two-acre lot, 
 and an income of $800 from his lectures; in August, 1841, 
 he lectures at Waterville, Me., on " The Method of Nature ; " 
 writing to Carlyle about this time, Emerson calls himself 
 " an incorrigible spouting Yankee." 
 
 From 1840 to 1844 he contributes more than thirty arti- 
 cles, including some of his best poems, to the Dial, first 
 edited by Margaret Fuller, and later (1842-44) by Emerson 
 himself; during 1841 he delivers, also, his lectures on "Man 
 the Reformer," "The Times," "The Transcendentalist," 
 and "The Conservative;" he publishes, during 1841, his 
 first volume of collected essays, including those on History, 
 Self-Reliance, Compensation, Spiritual Laws, Love, Friend- 
 ship, Prudence, Heroism, the Over-Soul, Circles, and Art; 
 in February, 1842, he loses his only son, then five years old, 
 whom he mourns to Carlyle as " a piece of love and sunshine 
 well worth my watching from morning jto night," and writes 
 " A Threnody " in memory of his lost child ; he delivers his 
 address on " The Young American " in February, 1844, and 
 publishes, during the same year, the second volume of his 
 essays; he lectures also on "New England Reformers" dur- 
 ing 1844, and publishes the first volume of his poems in 1846 ; 
 he sails a second time for Europe October 5, 1847 ; after 
 spending a week with Carlyle, Emerson begins a lecture tour, 
 arranged for him by the Rev. Alexander Ireland ; while lect- 
 uring in Edinburgh he meets Leigh Hunt, De Quincey, and 
 many other notabilities; he visits Paris before returning to 
 America; in 1850 he publishes selections from his English 
 lectures under the title " Representative Men ; " during 1855 
 he delivers anti-slavery addresses in New York and Boston, 
 favoring the purchase of the slaves by the Government, and 
 also supports female suffrage in an address before the Woman's 
 
500 EMERSON 
 
 Rights Convention ; in 1856 he publishes " English Traits; " 
 in 1857 he begins to contribute to the Atlantic Monthly, then 
 just established, and continues till his twenty-eighth article ; 
 he helps to found the famous " Saturday Club," which in- 
 cludes Hawthorne, Motley, Dana, Lowell, Whipple, Agassiz, 
 Holmes, Longfellow, and others; during 1858 he publishes 
 his essay on Persian Poetry. 
 
 In 1859 Emerson makes his greatest public speech- at the 
 Burns Festival in Boston ; in 1860 he publishes the " Conduct 
 of Life ;" in 1862 he delivers his funeral address over Tho- 
 reau and his Address on the Emancipation Proclamation ; 
 during 1863 he publishes "The Boston Hymn," "Volun- 
 taries," and many other poems; during 1866 he writes 
 "Terminus," one of his noblest poems; during 1868, 1869, 
 and 1870 he lectures at Harvard University on " The Natural 
 History of the Intellect ; " in 1870 he publishes " Society and 
 Solitude; " during 1871 he visits California in company with 
 Professor J. B. Thayer, who afterward published an account 
 of the journey ; Emerson loses a part of his house and many 
 valuable papers by fire in July, 1872 ; he sails the third time 
 for Europe in October, 1872, in company with his daughter 
 Ellen, going as far as Egypt ; during his absence friends sub- 
 scribe $11,620 for the rebuilding of his house; he returns to 
 Concord in May, 1873, and is greeted with a popular ova- 
 tion ; in 1874 he publishes " Parnassus," a collection of 
 poems from British and American authors ; during the same 
 year he is nominated Lord Rector of the University of Glas- 
 gow, and receives five hundred votes against seven hundred 
 for Disraeli, which he calls "quite the fairest laurel that has 
 ever fallen on me; " in April, 1875, he delivers an address 
 at Concord on the one hundredth anniversary of " the fight 
 at the bridge; " before the shock of the fire in 1872 his men- 
 tal powers, especially his memory, began to show signs of 
 failure ; in March, 1878, he lectures in the Old South Church 
 at Boston on " Fortune of the Republic ; " in May, 1879, he 
 
[ERSON 501 
 
 lectures at Harvard University on "The Preacher;" in 1881 
 he reads before the Massachusetts Historical Society a paper 
 on Carlyle; in February, 1882, he publishes in the Century 
 an article on " Superlatives; " he dies at Concord, April 27, 
 1882. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY ON EMERSON'S STYLE. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 59-68 
 
 and 234-259. 
 Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 77-90. 
 Sanborn, F. B., "The Genius and Character of Emerson." Boston, 
 
 1885, Osgood, 1-425. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "Recollections." Boston, 1878, Ticknor, 119-154. 
 Lowell, J. R., "Works." Boston, 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., i: 
 
 349-361. 
 Arnold, M., "Discourses in America." London, 1885, Macmillan, 
 
 138-207. 
 Morley, J., "Critical Miscellanies." New York, 1893, Macmillan, I: 
 
 293-346. 
 Powell, T., "The Living Authors of America." New York, 1850, 
 
 Stringer, 49-77. 
 Welsh, A. H., " Development of English Literature." Chicago, 1882, 
 
 Griggs, 2 : 523-542. 
 Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
 
 i : 33Q-37 1 and 2: 137-172. 
 
 Birrell, A., "Obiter Dicta," New York, 1887, Scribner, 2: 238-256. 
 Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1851-52, J. Hogg, i: 
 
 195-208 ; 2 : 120-135 ; 3 : 328-336. 
 Grimm, H., "Literature." Boston, 1886, Cupples, Upham & Co., 
 
 1-44. 
 Burroughs, J., "Indoor Studies." Boston, 1893, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 128-162. 
 Conway, M. D., "Emerson at Home and Abroad." Boston, 1882, 
 
 Osgood, 1-383. 
 Alcott, A. B., "Ralph Waldo Emerson," etc. Boston, 1882, Cupples, 
 
 Upham & Co., 1-56. 
 Woodbury, C. R., "Talks with Emerson." New York, 1890, Baker 
 
 & Taylor, 1-177. 
 James, H., "Partial Portraits." New York, 1888, Macmillan, 1-34. 
 
5O2 EMERSON 
 
 Guernsey, A. H , '-'Ralph Waldo Emerson, Philosopher and Poet." 
 
 New York, 1881, Appleton, 1-327. 
 Hawthorne, J., " Confessions and Criticisms." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 
 
 186-217. 
 Walsh, W. S. (Shepard), "Pen Pictures of Modern Authors." New 
 
 York, 1886, Putnam, 86-98. 
 Dana, W. F., "The Optimism of Emerson." Boston, 1886, Cupples, 
 
 Upham & Co., 1-64. 
 Bungay, G. W., "Off- Hand Takings." New York, 1854, Dewitt, 
 
 119-127. 
 
 Nichol, J., "American Literature." Edinburgh, 1882, Black, 254-321. 
 Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes," etc. New York, 1885, Crowell, 
 
 284- 288. 
 Garnet, R. (Robertson), " Great Writers " (Emerson). New York, 1888, 
 
 Whitaker. 
 Friswell, J. H., "Modern Men of Letters." London, 1870, Hodder 
 
 & Stoughton, 333-342. 
 Frothingham, O. B., "Transcendentalism in New England." New 
 
 York, 1876, Putnam, 218-249. 
 Hunt, T. W., "Studies in Literature and Style." New York, 1890, 
 
 Armstrong, 246-279. 
 Willis, N. P. , " Hurrygraphs. " Rochester, New York, 1853, Alden 
 
 Beardsly Co., 169-179. 
 Scudder, H. E., "Men and Letters." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., I47-I7I- 
 Robertson, J. M., "Modern Humanists." London, 1891, Swan, Son- 
 
 nenschein & Co., 112-137. 
 North British Review, 47 : 319-358 (Editor). 
 Christian Examiner, 30: 253-262 (C. C. Felton); 38: 87-106 (F. H. 
 
 Hedge); 48: 314-318 (C. A. Bartol). 
 North American Review, 136: 431-446 (E. P. Whipple); 130: 479-499 
 
 (F. H. Underwood); 70: 520-524 (C. E. Norton); 70: 520-525 
 
 (C. E. Norton); 140: 129-144 (Geo. Bancroft). 
 The Century Magazine, 25 : 875-886 (E. C. Stedman) ; 5 : 925-932 
 
 (Burroughs); 4: 265-272 (H. James, Jr.). 
 The Chautauquan, ij : 687-692 (J. V. Cheney). 
 The Nation, 34 : 375-377 (T. W. Higginson) ; 40: 99-101 (T. W. Hig- 
 
 ginson). 
 
 The Arena> 10: 736-745 (W. H. Savage). 
 Harpers Magazine, 52 : 417-420 (E. P. Whipple) ; 68 : 457~48 (Annie 
 
 Fields); 65: 278-281 (J. Hawthorne); 65: 576-587 (E. P. Whip- 
 pie). 
 
EMERSON 503 
 
 Scribner's Monthly, 17: 496-512 (F. B. Sanborn). 
 
 Literary World, II : 175-176 (T. W. Higginson) and 174-185, obse- 
 quies (several authors). 
 
 Methodist Quarterly Review, 34: 357-374 (Geo. Prentice). 
 British Quarterly Review, ii: 281-315 (J. Chapman). 
 Taifs Magazine, 15: 17-23 (G. Gilfillan). 
 People's Journal, 4: 305-15 (Parke Godwin). ' 
 Critic, i : 330 (W. Whitman) ; 2 : 140 (J. Burroughs). 
 Athenaum, 1883, I : 335 (Whipple). 
 Overland Monthly, n. s., 4: 434 (E. R. Sill). 
 Good Words, 28 : 807 (F. H. Underwood). 
 Poet Lore, I : 253 (W. L. Harris). 
 Dial (Chicago), 10: 49-51 (O. F. Emerson). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 Optimism -- Serenity Wholesomeness. 
 
 Emerson's sympathetic benevolence comes from what he 
 calls his 'persistent optimism.' . . . Never had man such 
 a sense of the inexhaustibleness of nature and such hope. 
 Happiness in labor rightness and veracity in all the life of 
 the spirit, happiness and eternal hope that was Emerson's 
 gospel. . . . His persistent optimism is the root of his 
 greatness and the source of his charm. . . . Strong as 
 was Emerson's optimism, and unconquerable as was his be- 
 lief in a good result to emerge from all which he saw going 
 on around him, no misanthropical satirist ever saw short- 
 comings and absurdities more clearly than he did, or exposed 
 them more courageously. . . . Truly, his insight is ad- 
 mirable, his truth is precious ; yet the secret of his effect is 
 not even in these; it is in his temper. It is in the hopeful, 
 serene, beautiful temper wherewith these, in Emerson, are 
 indissolubly joined ; in which they work, and have their 
 being." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 11 Emerson looked serenely at the ugly aspect of contem- 
 porary life because, as an optimist, he was a herald of the 
 future. . . . Carlyle, as a pessimist, denounced the pres- 
 
504 EMERSON 
 
 ent, and threw all the energy of his vivid dramatic genius into 
 vitalizing the past. He [Emerson] declared, even when 
 current events appeared ugliest to the philanthropist, that 
 1 the highest thought and the deepest love is born with Vic- 
 tory at its head.' " E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " He was an optimist with reverent intent. It was in vain 
 to ask him to assert what he did not know, to avow a creed 
 founded upon his hopes. . . . He looked upon nature 
 as pregnant with soul ; for him the spirit always moved upon 
 the face of the waters. The incomprehensible plan was per- 
 fect. Whatever is, is right." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " He had faith that the goodness and wisdom of humanity 
 would, in the long run, prove to be more than equal to the 
 goodness and wisdom of any possible man ; and that men 
 would govern themselves more nobly and successfully than 
 any individual monarch could govern them. . . . He is 
 the champion of the Republic ; he is our future living in our 
 present and showing the world, by anticipation, what sort of 
 excellence we are capable of." Julian Hawthorne. 
 
 " 'Tis everything to have a true believer in the world, 
 dealing with men and women as if they were divine in idea 
 and real in fact ; meeting persons and events at a glance 
 directly, not at a million removes, and so passing fair and 
 fresh into life and literature the delights and ornaments of 
 the race." A. B. Alcott. 
 
 11 He was an optimist, always full of hope, finding sky-born 
 music in everything and a power in nature to lift better up to 
 best." George Bancroft. 
 
 " The greatness of his work consists in the measure of 
 pure genius and of inspiration to noble and heroic conduct 
 which it holds. Asa writer he had but one aim, namely, to 
 inspire, to wake up his reader or hearer to the noblest and the 
 highest that there was in him. ... He was to scatter the 
 seed-germs of nobler thinking and living. . . . In Emer- 
 son more than in any other there are words that are like 
 
EMERSON 
 
 inners leading to victory, symbolical, inspiring, rallying, 
 seconding, and pointing the way to our best endeavor. 
 His mind acts like a sun lens in gathering the cold pale beams 
 of that luminary to a focus which warms and stimulates the 
 reader in a surprising manner." John Burroughs. 
 
 " In all he is the optimist rather than the pessimist, the 
 philosopher, not the mere by-stander. . . . He wrote 
 to Carlyle, ' My whole philosophy, which is very real, teaches 
 acquiescence and optimism.' He was an optimist, a serene 
 presence, unexcited because confident of the ultimate result. 
 Though bitterly attacked, he seldom retorted and seldom 
 swerved from his self-confident course." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Hast not thy share ? On winged feet, 
 Lo ! it rushes thee to meet ; 
 And all that Nature made thy own, 
 Floating in air or pent in stone, 
 Will rive the hills and swim the sea, 
 And, like thy shadow, follow thee." 
 
 Compensation. 
 
 " Yet spake yon purple mountain, 
 Yet said yon ancient wood, 
 That Night or Day, that Love or Crime, 
 Leads all souls to the good." The Park. 
 
 " How much, preventing God, how much I owe 
 
 To the defences thou hast round me set ; 
 Example, custom, fear, occasion slow, 
 
 These scorned bondsmen were my parapet." Grace. 
 
 2. Moral Elevation. " That he speaks always to what 
 is highest and what is least selfish in us, few Americans of the 
 generation younger than his own would be disposed to deny." 
 Lowell. 
 
 "He lives in the highest atmosphere of thought. 
 He is always in the presence of the infinite, and ennobles the 
 
506 EMERSON 
 
 accidents of human existence so that they partake of the ab- 
 solute and eternal while he is looking at them." Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " He is moral first and last, and it is through his impas- 
 sioned and poetic treatment of the moral law that he gains 
 such an ascendancy over his reader. . . . When he died, 
 it was not as a sweet singer, like Longfellow, who had gone 
 silent ; but something precious and paternal had gone out of 
 nature ; a voice of courage and hope and inspiration to ail 
 noble endeavor had ceased to speak. . . . He says, as 
 for other things he makes poetry of them, but the moral law 
 makes poetry of him." John -Burroughs. 
 
 " He has been a delighted student of many literatures and 
 many religions, but all his quotations from them show that he 
 rejects everything which does not tend to cheer, invigorate, 
 and elevate, which is not nutritious food for the healthy 
 human soul. ... He drew from all sources, and what- 
 ever fed his religious sense of mystery, of might, of beauty, 
 and of Deity was ever welcome to his soul." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " His poetry comes from a large and pure nature, and it 
 will always be prized most by the readers who are most in 
 sympathy with the qualities which gain for the author the 
 respect and the gratitude of those whose respect and gratitude 
 are best worth having." Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 11 He taught in the first place that this universe is a spirit- 
 ual universe, a manifestation of God. . . . In one of his 
 poems, entitled ' Blight,' he laments the shallow cowardice 
 of the age that contents itself with mere hearsay, and so misses 
 the divine vision and the divine life." W. H. Savage. 
 
 " When Emerson wishes to speak with peculiar terseness, 
 with unusual exaltation, with special depth of meaning, with 
 the utmost intensity of feeling, he speaks in poetic form." 
 C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " With Emerson it is always the special capacity for moral 
 experience always that and only that. We have the impres- 
 
EMERSON 507 
 
 sion somehow that life had never bribed him to look at any- 
 thing but the soul." Henry James. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Life is too short to waste 
 In critic peep or cynic bark, 
 Quarrel or reprimand ; 
 'Twill soon be dark ; 
 Up ! mind thine own aim and 
 God save the mark ! "ToJ. W. 
 
 " Though love repine and reason chafe, 
 
 There came a voice without reply, 
 ' 'Tis man's perdition to be safe, 
 
 When for the truth he ought to die.' " 
 
 Sacrifice. 
 
 tl So nigh is grandeur to our dust, 
 
 So near is God to man, 
 When duty whispers low, * Thou must,' 
 The youth replies, ' I can.' " Voluntaries. 
 
 3. Individuality Sincerity. " Like all poets and 
 philosophers who are classed as pantheists, Emerson had a 
 pronounced individuality. Throughout his life he guarded it 
 with a jealous care. He could never endure the thought of 
 being the organ of any. ... In reading him we feel 
 that we are in communion with an original person as well as 
 with an original poet. . . . Nothing that can be said 
 against him touches his essential quality of manliness. 
 How superb and animating his lofty intellectual courage ! 
 ' The soul,' he says, is in her native realm, and it is wider 
 than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love.' The 
 poet's character was on a level with his lofty thinking." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Emerson's ideal is the man who stands firm, who is un- 
 moved, who never laughs or apologizes or assents through 
 good-nature or goes abroad ; who is not afraid of giving of- 
 
5O8 EMERSON 
 
 fence; who never answers you with supplication in his eye 
 in fact, who stands like a granite pillar amid the slough of 
 life. ... He leads, in our time and country, one illus- 
 trious division, at least, in the holy crusade of the affections 
 and intuitions against the usurpations of tradition and theo- 
 logical dogma." John Burroughs. 
 
 " By this individualism was founded the great nation in 
 which Emerson so thoroughly believed, and upon it must that 
 nation rest in the future. . . . Both in poetry and in 
 prose his influence is as spontaneous as that of nature ; he an- 
 nounces and lets others plead." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " He represents Thought in any adjustment of our poetic 
 group, and furthermore his thought being independent and 
 emancipatory the American conflict with superstition, with 
 servility to inherited usage and opinion. ... He has 
 taught his countrymen the worth of virtue., wisdom, and cour- 
 age, above all, to fashion life upon a self-reliant plan, obeying 
 the dictates of their own souls. . . . Emerson never felt 
 the strength of proportion that compels the races to whom art 
 is a religion and a law. . . . His instinct of personality, 
 not without a pride of its own, made him a nonconformist." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Instead of cultivating the tormenting and enfeebling spirit 
 of scruple, instead of multiplying precepts, he bade men not 
 to crush out their souls under the burden of Duty ; they are 
 to remember that a wise life is not wholly filled up by com- 
 mandments to do and to abstain from doing. Hence we have 
 in Emerson the teaching of a vigorous morality without the 
 formality of a dogma and the deadly tedium of didactics." 
 John Morley. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Seek not the spirit, if it hide 
 Inexorable to thy zeal : 
 Trembler, do not whine and chide : 
 Art thou not also real ? 
 
:MERSON 
 
 509 
 
 Stoop not then to poor excuse ; 
 
 Turn on the accuser roundly ; say, 
 
 ' Here am I, here will I abide 
 
 Forever to myself soothfast ; 
 
 Go thou, sweet Heaven, or at thy pleasure stay ! ' 
 
 Already Heaven with thee its lot has cast, 
 
 For only it can absolutely deal." Sursum Corda. 
 
 " I like a church, I like a cowl ; 
 I love a prophet of the soul ; 
 And on my heart monastic aisles 
 Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles ; 
 Yet not for all his faith can see 
 Would I that cowled Churchman be." 
 
 The Problem. 
 
 " Man's the elm, and Wealth the vine ; 
 Stanch and strong the tendrils twine : 
 Though the frail ringlets thee deceive, 
 None from its stock that vine can reave. 
 Fear not, then, thou child infirm, 
 There's no god dare wrong a worm ; 
 Laurel crowns cleave to deserts, 
 And Power to him who power exerts." 
 
 Compensation . 
 
 4. Conciseness Condensation. " So many pre- 
 cious sayings enrich his more sustained poems as to make 
 us include him at times with the complete artists. . . . 
 Bacon's elementary essays excepted, there are none in English 
 of which it can be more truly averred that there is noth- 
 ing superfluous in them. . . . Each sentence is an idea, 
 an epigram, an image, or a flash of spiritual light. . . . 
 Terseness is a distinctive feature of his style. ... No 
 one has compressed more sternly the pith of his discourse. 
 . . . His generalizations pertain to the unseen world; 
 viewing the actual, he puts its strength and fineness alike into 
 a line or an epithet. He was born with an unrivalled faculty 
 of selection. . . . Emerson treats of the principles be- 
 
510 EMERSON 
 
 hind all history, and his laconic phrases are the very honey- 
 cells of thought." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Within the limits of a single sentence, no man who ever 
 wrote the English tongue has put more meaning into words 
 than Emerson. In his hands, to adopt Ben Jonson's vigorous 
 phrase, words ' are rammed with thought.' . . . Neither 
 Greek precision nor Roman vigor could produce a phrase 
 that Emerson could not match. . . . Look through all 
 of Emerson's writings, and then consider whether in all liter- 
 ature you can find a man who has better fulfilled that inspira- 
 tion stated in such condensed words by Joubert, ' to put a 
 whole book into a page, a whole page into a phrase, and that 
 phrase into a word.' After all, it is phrases and words won 
 like this that give immortality." T. W. Higginson. 
 
 11 The compactness of Emerson's writings is apparent to the 
 most careless reader. The quatrain ' Teach me your mood, 
 O patient stars/ really includes the thought and lesson of the 
 eight stanzas comprising one of Matthew Arnold's best known 
 poems. He gives us saws, sayings, admonitions, flashes, 
 glimpses, few broad constructed pictures. . . . The 
 poems, at their best, are more concise than the prose." 
 C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " Our poet is also so terse in expression that his thoughts 
 might be selected out and printed as epigrams. 
 Never a word too much ; always the word chosen was the one 
 inevitable word." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 "From first to last he strikes one as being something 
 extremely pure and compact, like a nut or an egg. . - . 
 In fact, Emerson is an essence, a condensation. ... It 
 would be impossible to condense any of his essays ; they are 
 the last results of condensation ; we can only cut them up and 
 abridge them." John Burroughs. 
 
 " Who else could thus put eternity into a nutshell? Who 
 else could reflect the universe in a mirror no larger than the pit 
 of the eye? "_ W. S. Kennedy. 
 
EMERSON 511 
 
 " You are dazzled on every page by his superabundance of 
 compactly expressed reflection and his marvellous command of 
 all the resources of imaginative illustration. Every paragraph 
 is literally 'rammed with life.' A fortnight's meditation is 
 sometimes condensed into a sentence of a couple of lines. 
 Almost every word bears the mark of deliberate thought in 
 its selection. . . . That wonderful compactness and con- 
 densation of statement which surprise and charm the reader of 
 his books were due to the fact that he exerted every faculty of 
 his mind in the act of verbal expression. A prodigal in respect 
 to thoughts, he was still the most austere economist in the use of 
 words. . . . The fire in him, which would instantly have 
 dissipated ice into vapor, made the iron in him run molten 
 and white hot into the mould of his thought when he was 
 stirred by a great sentiment or an inspiring insight. It is 
 admitted that he is worthy to rank among the great masters of 
 expression ; yet he was the least fluent of educated beings. 
 In a company of swift talkers he seemed utterly helpless, until 
 he fixed upon the right word or phrase to embody his mean- 
 ing, and then the word or phrase was like a gold coin, fresh 
 and bright from the mint and recognized as worth ten times 
 as much as the small change of conversation which had been 
 circulating so rapidly around the table while he "was mute or 
 stammering." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Go thou to thy learned task, 
 
 I stay with the flowers of spring : 
 Go thou of the ages ask 
 
 What me the hours will bring." 
 
 The Botanist. 
 
 " The tongue is prone to lose the way, 
 
 Not so the pen, for in a letter 
 We have not better things to say, 
 But surely say them better." Life. 
 
$12 EMERSON 
 
 " Once slept the world, an egg of stone, 
 And pulse and sound and light was none ; 
 And God said, ' Throb ! ' and there was motion, 
 And the vast mass became vast ocean." Woodnotes. 
 
 5. Mysticism Obscurity. " The symbols he deals 
 with are too vast, sometimes, we must own, too vague, for the 
 unilluminated terrestrial and arithmetical intelligence. One 
 cannot help feeling that he might have dropped in upon some 
 remote centre of spiritual life where the fourth dimension 
 of space was as familiarly known to everybody as a foot- 
 measure or a yard-stick is to us." Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 11 It is, perhaps, due in part to the absence from Mr. Emer- 
 son's genius of any controlling aesthetic element that he not 
 infrequently indulges himself in mysticism, and makes his 
 verses puzzles and enigmas not only to the common reader 
 but even to the trained student- of poetry.'* Charles Eliot 
 Norton. 
 
 " It must be taken for granted that Wordsworth's experience 
 was the result and record of genuine insight, and that it can- 
 not be curtly dismissed as ' crazy, mystical metaphysics ' be- 
 fore Emerson can even obtain a hearing ; for he undoubtedly 
 was more crazy and mystical than Wordsworth cared to be, 
 while independently following in the path which Wordsworth 
 had marked out. ... He was a man who had earned the 
 right to utter these noble truths by patient meditation and 
 clear insight. . . . It is this depth of spiritual experience 
 and subtility of spiritual insight which distinguishes Emerson 
 from all other American authors, and makes him an element- 
 ary power as well as an elementary thinker." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "His intuitive faculty was so determined that ideality and 
 mysticism gave him the surest promise of realities. 
 If a theist, with his intuition of an all-pervading life, he 
 no doubt felt himself a portion of that life ; and the sense of 
 omnipresence was so clearly the dominant sense of its attri- 
 butes that to call him a theist rather than a pantheist is simply 
 
EMERSON 513 
 
 a dispute about terms. . . . One may say that his philo- 
 sophical method bears to the inductive or empirical a relation 
 similar to that between the poetry of self-expression and the 
 poetry of aesthetic creation, a relation of the subjective to the 
 objective. . . . If he sought first principles, he looked 
 within himself for them." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " There is much in Emerson's works that will not stand 
 rigid literary tests; much that is too fanciful and ethereal, too 
 curious and paradoxical not real or true, but only seem- 
 ingly so, or so by a kind of violence or disruption. . . . 
 Not in the poetry of any of his contemporaries is there such a 
 burden of the mystery of things." John Burroughs. 
 
 " This [a passage in " The Celestial Love"] is mysticism, 
 and the very romance of mysticism intelligible to some, 
 musical to all and breathing deeply of Plato and the Ori- 
 entals." F. B. Sanborn. 
 
 "The mystic obscurity of some of the poems . 
 has discouraged or repelled many from the study of any of 
 them." Julian Hawthorne. 
 
 11 Milton says that poetry ought to be simple, sensuous, im- 
 passioned. Well, Emerson's poetry is seldom either simple 
 or sensuous or impassioned. In general it lacks directness ; it 
 lacks concreteness ; it lacks energy. His grammar is often 
 embarrassed ; in particular, the want of clearly marked dis- 
 tinction between the subject and the object of his sentence is 
 a frequent cause of obscurity in him. , . . A poem which 
 shall be a plain, forcible, inevitable whole he hardly ever pro- 
 duced. . . . Even passages and single lines of thorough 
 plainness and commanding force are rare in his works." 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " What are the faults of Emerson as a thinker and a writer? 
 The most conspicuous, doubtless, is a certain vagueness of 
 thought and utterance. . . . His very wish to be terse 
 sometimes makes him obscure, and oftener causes him to seem 
 obscure." C. F. Richardson. 
 33 
 
5H EMERSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thou art the unanswered question ; 
 Couldst see thy proper eye, 
 Always it asketh, asketh ; 
 And each answer is a lie." The Sphinx. 
 
 tl For Destiny never swerves, 
 
 Nor yields to men the helm, 
 He shoots his thought by hidden nerves 
 Throughout the solid realm." 
 
 The World-Soul 
 
 " A sad self-knowledge, withering, fell 
 On the beauty of Uriel ; 
 In heaven once eminent, the god 
 Withdrew, that hour, into his cloud ; 
 Whether doomed to long gyration 
 In the sea of generation, 
 Or by knowledge grown too bright 
 To hit the nerve of feebler sight."- Uriel. 
 
 6. Americanism. " Every American has something of 
 Emerson in him, and the secret of the land was in the poet 
 the same Americanism that Whitman sees in the farmer, the 
 deck-hand, the snag-toothed hostler, atoning with its human- 
 ities for their sins, past and present, as for the sins of Harte's 
 gamblers and diggers of the gulch." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " He was an American in no narrow and sectional spirit. 
 He was an idealistic American an American of the soul, car- 
 ing for freedom and morality and the seeing mind more than 
 for Concord River or for Wachusett Mountain." G. W. 
 Cooke. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 " We grant no dukedoms to the few, 
 
 We hold like rights, and shall ; 
 Equal on Sunday in the pew, 
 
 On Monday in the Mall, 
 For what avail the plough or sail, 
 Or land or life, if freedom fail ? " Boston. 
 
EMERSON 515 
 
 " God said, ' I am tired of kings, 
 I suffer them no more ; 
 Up to my ear the morning brings 
 The outrage of the poor.' 
 
 " My angel, his name is Freedom, 
 Choose him to be your king ; 
 He shall cut pathways east and west 
 And fend you with his wing. 
 
 " Lo ! I uncover the land 
 Which I hid of old time in the West, 
 As the sculptor uncovers the statue 
 When he has wrought his best ; 
 
 " I show Columbia, of the rocks 
 Which dip their foot in the seas 
 And soar to the air-borne flocks 
 Of clouds and the boreal fleece." 
 
 Boston Hymn. 
 
 7. Appreciation of Nature. " Emerson doubts his 
 power to capture the very truth of Nature. Its essence its 
 beauty is so elusive. . . . But such poems as the ' Fore- 
 runners ' show how closely he moved, after all, upon the trail 
 of the evading sprite. He seemed, by first intention, and with 
 an exact precision of grace and aptness, to put in phrases what 
 he saw and felt and he saw and felt so much more than oth- 
 ers ! He had the aboriginal eye and the civilized sensibility ; 
 he caught both the external and the scientific truth of natural 
 things and their poetic charm withal. . . . Emerson's 
 prose is full of poetry, and his poems are light and air. His 
 modes of expression, like his epithets, are imaginative." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Emerson's poetry of nature has the broadest range, from 
 noon-day sky to swampy pool, from snow-capped mountain to 
 skipping squirrel on the tree. It would be as just to call Em- 
 
5l6 EMERSON 
 
 erson the poet of nature as to apply the familiar phrase to 
 Bryant. . . . But nature in Emerson's verse is something 
 more than mere prettiness. . . . The seer and the mystic 
 could treat Nature in the simplest fashion when he had no 
 other purpose in view." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " He took his allusions and his poetic material from the 
 woods and waters around him, and wrote fearlessly even of the 
 humble-bee." T. W. Ifigginson. 
 
 " The perception of beauty in nature or in human nature, 
 whether it be the beauty of a flower or of a soul, makes Emer- 
 son joyous and glad ; he exults in celebrating it, and he com- 
 municates to his readers his own ecstatic mood. . . . The 
 singular attractiveness of his writings comes from his intense 
 perception of beauty, both in its abstract quality as the ' awful 
 loveliness ' which such poets as Shelley have celebrated and in 
 the more concrete expression by which it fascinates ordinary 
 minds. . . . His ' Ode to Beauty ' indicates that the 
 sense of beauty penetrated to the inmost centre of his being 
 and was an indissoluble element in his character. 
 The sense of beauty, indeed, was so vital an element in the 
 constitution of his being that it decorated everything it 
 touched. His imaginative faculty, both in the conception and 
 the creation of beauty, is uncorrupted by any morbid senti- 
 ment. His vision reaches to the very source of beauty the 
 beauty that cheers." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " An intense love of nature and a keen perception of the 
 beauties of the external world, are manifested in every page of 
 his writings." C. C. Felton. 
 
 " Both his poetry and his prose abound with lively descrip- 
 tions of nature, and show the utmost delight in every sight 
 and sound of the material world. . . . Nature is shown 
 not merely as a background or theatre for man's activities but 
 as a source of beauty and strength, working with and for us, 
 and always leading us to worship. . . . When a man has 
 a sincere admiration and awe in the presence of the works of 
 
EMERSON SI/ 
 
 the Creator he will be in a mood to estimate Emerson at his 
 true value." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " His observation of Nature is always marvellously close 
 and fine." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " For Nature beats in perfect time, 
 And rounds with rhyme her every rune, 
 Whether she work in land or sea, 
 Or hide underground her alchemy. 
 Thou canst not wave thy staff in air, 
 Or dip thy paddle in the lake, 
 But it carves the bow of beauty there, 
 And the ripples in rhyme the oar forsake." Nature. 
 
 " Oh, when I am safe in my sylvan home, 
 I tread on the pride of Greece and Rome ; 
 And when I am stretched beneath the pines, 
 Where the evening star so holy shines, 
 I laugh at the lore and the pride of man, 
 At the sophist schools and the learned clan, 
 For what are they all, in their high conceit, 
 When man in the bush with God may meet ? " 
 
 Good-Bye. 
 
 " Then I said, ' I covet truth ; 
 
 Beauty is unripe childhood's cheat ; 
 
 I leave it behind with the games of youth : 
 
 As I spoke, beneath my feet 
 
 The ground pine curled its pretty wreath, 
 
 Running over the club-moss burrs ; 
 
 I inhaled the violet's breath ; 
 
 Around me stood the oaks and firs ; 
 
 Pine-cones and acorns lay on the ground ; 
 
 Over me soared the eternal sky, 
 
 Full of light and of deity ; 
 
5 I c> EMERSON 
 
 Again I saw, again I heard, 
 
 The rolling river, the morning bird ; 
 
 Beauty through my senses stole ; 
 
 I yielded myself to the perfect whole." 
 
 Each and All. 
 
 8. Frequent Crudity in Thought and Style. 
 
 " His verse, often diamond-like in contrast with the feld- 
 spar of others, at times is ill-cut and beclouded. ... It 
 becomes a question whether his discords are those of an un- 
 developed artist or the sudden craft of one who knows all art 
 and can afford to be on easy terms with it. I think there is 
 evidence on both sides. ... It should be noted that 
 Emerson's vision of the sublime in scientific discovery in- 
 creased his distaste for mere style, and moved him to content- 
 ment with the readiest mode of expression. . . . There 
 was, it must be owned, a tinge of provincial arrogance, and 
 there were expressions a little less than ludicrous in his early 
 defiance of usage." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Not even Wordsworth pressed so dangerously as did 
 Emerson at times the borderland of what is bald or juvenile or 
 apparently silly. . . . We sometimes find art, sometimes 
 artlessness, sometimes deliberate crudity. Emerson's reflections 
 in the ' transcendental mood ' do, beyond question, sometimes 
 irresistibly suggest the close neighborhood between the sublime 
 and the ridiculous. . . . Emerson's most conspicuous fault 
 is a certain vagueness of thought and utterance. He maun- 
 ders along in well-balanced sentences, which are not devoid 
 of sense, separately, but which combine into no consistent or 
 valuable whole. It not infrequently happens that the whole 
 is less than the sum of all its parts." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 11 He made desperate work, now and then, with rhyme and 
 rhythm, showing that, though a born poet, he was not a born 
 si nger . ' ' Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 11 Mr. Emerson is still careless about the way in which his 
 thought embodies itself, and fails to guard his poetry against 
 
EMERSON 519 
 
 the attacks of time by casting his poem in perfect and imperish- 
 able forms. ... If there be much of the Greek philoso- 
 pher in his composition, there is very little of the Greek 
 artist." Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 " He is an extravagant, erratic genius, setting all authority 
 at defiance, sometimes writing with the pen of an angel (if 
 angels ever write), and sometimes gravely propounding the 
 most amazing nonsense." C. C. Felton. 
 
 " Even passages and single lines of thorough plainness are 
 rare in his poetry. They exist, of course ; but when we meet 
 them, they give us a slight shock of surprise, so little has Emer- 
 son accustomed us to them. . . . He is not plain and 
 concrete enough, in other words, not poetic enough ; . . . 
 and a failure of this kind goes through almost all his verse, 
 keeps him amid symbolisms and allusion and the fringes of 
 things ; and in spite of his spiritual power, deeply impairs his 
 poetic value. . . . His style has not the requisite whole- 
 ness of good tissue." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 " And why are these verses too often rude, harsh, or fantas- 
 tic to outlive the more polished and melodious poetry of 
 other men ? First, because of their superior tone. . . . 
 He lamented his imperfect use of the metrical faculty, which 
 he felt all the more keenly in contrast with the melodious 
 thoughts he had to utter and the fitting words in which he 
 could clothe these thoughts. He would have written much 
 more in verse if he had been content with his own metrical 
 expression as constantly as he was delighted with it sometimes. 
 But it is also true that he purposely roughened his work." 
 F. B. Sanborn. 
 
 " He uses words that are not only odd but vicious in con- 
 struction ; he is not always grammatically correct ; and he is 
 often clumsy ; and there is a visible feeling after epigrams that 
 do not always come." John Morley. 
 
520 EMERSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Mighty projects countermanded ; 
 Rash ambition, broken handed ; 
 Puny man and scentless rose 
 Tormenting Pan to double the dose." 
 
 Alphonso of Castile. 
 
 " The maiden in danger 
 Was saved by the swain ; 
 His stout arm restored her 
 To Broadway again. 
 
 " The maid would reward him, 
 Gay company come, 
 They laugh, she laughs with them ; 
 He is moonstruck and dumb." Tact. 
 
 " He [Cupid] affects the wood and wild, 
 Like a flower-hunting child ; 
 Buries himself in summer waves, 
 In trees, with beasts, in mines and caves, 
 Loves nature like a horned cow, 
 Bird, or deer, or caribou." The Initial Love. 
 
 9. Spontaneity Lyric Power. "At times I think 
 him the first of our lyric poets, his turns are so wild and 
 unexpected. ... He often captures us with absolute 
 beauty, the poetry that poets love the lilt and melody of 
 Shelley joined to precision of thought and outline. . . . 
 He had written poems of which the whole and the parts were 
 at least justly related masterpieces lyrical masterpieces. 
 . . . The opening [of " The Sphinx "] is strongly lyrical 
 and impressive." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The poetry of Emerson is valued, at least in some of its 
 parts, both by those who find enjoyment in lyrical expression 
 of common and laborious meditation or observation and by 
 those who are willing to give to verse a deep study."- C F. 
 Richardson. 
 
EMERSON 521 
 
 "Mr. Emerson's poetic genius seems as little modified 
 by conscious will as simply natural and inartistic as the 
 genius of the pine or hemlock." Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Spring still makes spring in the mind 
 When sixty years are told ; 
 Love wakes anew this throbbing heart, 
 And we are never old. 
 Over the winter glaciers 
 I see the summer glow, 
 And through the wild.-piled snow-drift, 
 The warm rosebuds below." The World-Soul. 
 
 1 'Hearken! Hearken! 
 
 If thou wouldst know the mystic song 
 
 Chanted when the sphere was young. 
 
 Aloft, abroad, the paean swells; 
 
 O wise man ! hear'st thou half it tells ? 
 
 O wise man ! hear'st thou the least part ? 
 
 'Tis the chronicle of art. 
 
 To the open ear it sings 
 
 Sweet the genesis of things, 
 
 Of tendency through endless ages, 
 
 Of star dust and star-pilgrimages ; 
 
 Of rounded worlds, of space and time, 
 
 Of the old flood's subsiding slime, 
 
 Of chemic matter, force, and form, 
 
 Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm ; 
 
 The rushing metamorphosis 
 
 Dissolving all that fixture is, 
 
 Melts things that be to things that seem 
 
 And solid nature to a dream." Woodnotes, II. 
 
 IO. Precision. "Finally, this poet's scenic joinery is 
 so true, so mortised with the one apt word, . . . and the 
 one best word or phrase is so unlocked for that, as I say, we 
 scarcely know whether this comes by grace of instinct or with 
 
522 EMERSON 
 
 search and artistic foresight. ... He was born with an 
 unrivalled faculty of selection. . . . As he triumphed 
 over the untruthfulness of the mere verse-maker and the dul- 
 ness of the moralist, his instant, sure, yet airy transcripts 
 gave his poems of nature a quality without a counterpart. 
 . . . Over and over again, he asserted his conviction that 
 every word should be the right word." . C. Stedman. 
 
 " His subtle selective instinct penetrates the vocabulary for 
 the one word he wants, as the long slender bill of those birds 
 (the tenui-rostrals) dives deep into the flower for its drop of 
 honey. ' ' Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " Neither Greek precision nor Roman vigor could produce 
 a phrase that Emerson could not match." T. W. Higginson. 
 
 11 His own pride is always to have the ready change, to 
 speak the exact and proper word, to give to every occasion 
 the dignity of wise speech." John Burroughs. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The prosperous and beautiful 
 
 To me seem not to wear 
 The yoke of conscience masterful, 
 
 Which galls me everywhere." The Park. 
 
 " The housemates sit 
 Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed 
 In a tumultuous privacy of storm." 
 
 The Snow -Storm. 
 
 " Thy trivial harp will never please 
 Or fill my craving ear ; 
 Its chords should ring as blows the breeze, 
 Free, peremptory, clear. 
 No jingling serenader's art, 
 Nor tinkle of piano strings, 
 Can make the wild blood start 
 In its mystic springs. 
 
EMERSON 523 
 
 The kingly bard 
 
 Must smite the chords rudely and hard, 
 
 As with hammer or with mace." Merlin. 
 
 ii. Suggestiveness Intellectuality. Emerson 
 himself well defines this characteristic of his own style, when 
 he says: " The most interesting writing is that which does 
 not quite satisfy the reader. Try and leave a little thinking 
 for him ; that will be better for you both. The trouble with 
 most writers is they spread too thin. The reader is as quick 
 as they ; has got there before them, and is ready and waiting. 
 A little guessing does him no harm, so I would assist him 
 with no connection. If you can see how the harness fits, so 
 can he. But make sure that you can see it." 
 
 " He has the immense advantage of suggesting something 
 new to the diligent reader after he has read him for the fiftieth 
 time. . . . His sentences have furnished texts for ser- 
 mons ; his paragraphs have been expanded into volumes, and 
 open minds, representing every variety of creed, have gladly 
 appropriated and worked out, after their own fashion, hints 
 and impulses derived from the creedless thinker and seer." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " The essays cannot be said to contain any system of relig- 
 ion, morals, or philosophy. The most that can be affirmed 
 is that they are full of significant hints upon all these subjects, 
 from which the author's opinions, if he had any, may be in- 
 ferred . " C. C. Felton . 
 
 " We look upon him as one of the few men of genius whom 
 our age has produced, and there needs no better proof of 
 it than his masculine faculty of fecundating other minds." 
 Lowell. 
 
 "From that time I have never ceased to read Emerson's 
 works ; and whenever I take up a volume, it seems to me as if 
 I were reading it for the first time. . . . He sometimes 
 makes wonderfully simple observations, which yet disentangle 
 the most intricate trains of thought." Grimm. 
 
524 EMERSON 
 
 "His poetry is interesting, it makes one think; but it is 
 not the poetry of one of the born poets. I say it of him with 
 reluctance, because I dislike giving pain to his admirers." 
 Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "Even in his poems that apparently run rapidly on, each 
 line is packed with thought." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Can rules or tutors educate 
 The semigod whom we await ? 
 He must be musical, 
 Tremulous, impressional, 
 Alive to gentle influence 
 Of landscape and of sky, 
 And tender to the spirit touch 
 Of man's or maiden's eye." Culture. 
 
 " Open innumerable doors, 
 The heaven where unveiled Allah pours 
 The flood of truth, the flood of good, 
 The Seraph's and the Cherub's food. 
 Those doors are men ; the Pariah hind 
 Admits them to the perfect Mind." Saadi. 
 
 " Hast thou named all the birds without a gun ? 
 Loved the wood-rose and left it on its stalk ? 
 At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? 
 Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? 
 And loved so well a high behavior 
 In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, 
 Nobility more nobly to repay ? 
 O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine." 
 
 Forbearance. 
 
 12. Transcendentalism. "Against materialism Em- 
 erson preached a spiritual, self-centred idealism. But still an- 
 other element was present in all that he taught. It was the 
 
EMERSON 525 
 
 element of reverential communion with nature and with the 
 spirit from which nature came and under which it works. 
 At its worst and vaguest, this spirit of Transcendentalism was 
 akin to a loose and profitless Pantheism ; at its best, it was a 
 helper of the highest and truest thing in humanity, its spirit- 
 ual part. He restated for the modern world the eternal prin- 
 ciples of transcendentalism, of spiritualism, of the inner light, 
 never lost since the days of Plato." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " There is always the idea of soul, central and pervading, 
 of which Nature's forms are but the created symbols. . . . 
 Few have had Emerson's inward eye, but it is well that some 
 have not been restricted to it. ... His voice comes 
 ' like a falling star ' from a skyey dome of pure abstraction. 
 If a theist, with his intuition of an all-pervading 
 life, he no doubt felt himself a portion of that life, and the 
 sense of omnipresence was so clearly the dominant sense of its 
 attributes that to call him a theist instead of a pantheist is 
 merely a dispute about terms. . . . One may say that 
 his philosophical method bears to the inductive or empirical 
 a relation similar to that between the poetry of self-expression 
 and the poetry of aesthetic creation, a relation of the subjec- 
 tive to the objective. . . . If he sought first principles, 
 he looked within himself for them. ... I think that the 
 weakness of ' transcendental' art is as fairly manifested in Em- 
 erson's first and chief collection of verse as were its felicities. 
 . . . It is true that he was not the prince of transcenden- 
 talists but the prince of idealists. . . . Emerson, a man 
 of our time, while a transcendentalist, looking inward rather 
 than to books for his wisdom, studied well the past, and earlier 
 sages were the faculty of his school." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Human personality presented itself to Emerson as a pass- 
 ing phase of universal being. . . . Born of the Infinite, 
 to the Infinite it was to return. Sometimes he treats his own 
 personality as interchangeable with objects in nature he 
 would put it off like a garment and clothe himself in the land- 
 
526 EMERSON 
 
 scape. . . . The difference between Emerson's poetry 
 and that of his contemporaries, with whom he would be nat- 
 urally compared, is that of algebra and arithmetic. He deals 
 largely in general symbols, abstractions, and infinite series. 
 He is always seeing the universal in the particular." Oliver 
 Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " I contrasted the coolness of this transcendentalist, when- 
 ever he discussed matters relating to the conduct of human 
 life, with the fury of delusion under which merchants of es- 
 tablished reputation sometimes seemed to be laboring in their 
 mad attempts to resist the operations of the natural laws of 
 trade." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 1 ' Mr. Emerson is a transcendentalist whose nervous energy 
 has been exalted, and whose viscera and animal spirits have 
 been burnt away." Edward Dowden. 
 
 11 He liked to explain the transcendentalists, but did not 
 care at all to be explained by them." Henry James. 
 
 "Mr. Emerson is not to be confounded with any class, 
 though he has strong affinities with the transcendentalists." 
 C. C. Felton. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Is it that my opulent soul 
 
 Was mingled from the generous whole ; 
 Sea-valleys and the deep of skies 
 Furnished several supplies ; 
 And the sands whereof I'm made 
 Draw me to them, self-betrayed ? " 
 
 Ode to Beauty. 
 
 " Onward and on, the eternal Pan, 
 Who layeth the world's incessant plan, 
 Halteth never in one shape, 
 But forever doth escape, 
 Like wave or flame, into new forms 
 Of gem and air, of plants and worms." 
 
 Woodnotes, II. 
 
EMERSON 527 
 
 " If thou trowest 
 How the chemic eddies play, 
 Pole to pole, and what they say ; 
 And that these gray crags 
 Not on crags are hung, 
 But beads are of a rosary 
 On prayer and music strung ; 
 And, credulous, through the granite seeming, 
 Seest the smile of Reason beaming ; 
 Can thy style-discerning eye 
 The hidden-working Builder spy, 
 Who builds, yet makes no chips, no din, 
 With hammer soft as snowflakes flight ; 
 Knowest thou this ? 
 O pilgrim, wandering not amiss! 
 Already my rocks lie light, 
 And soon my cone will spin." Monadnoc. 
 
 13. Lack of Logical Sequence. "This was Emer- 
 son's method not to write a perfect poem, a poem that 
 should be an inevitable whole, . . . but to write the 
 perfect line, to set the imagination ablaze with a single 
 verse, leaving the effects of form, of proportion, to be 
 achieved by those who were equipped for it." -John Bur- 
 roughs. 
 
 4 * They [Emerson's poems] are too naked, unrelated, and 
 cosmic ; too little clad with the vesture of human associations. 
 . Everything is thrown in just as it comes, and some- 
 times the pell-mell is enough to persuade us that Pope did not 
 exaggerate when he said that no one qualification is so likely 
 to make a good writer as the power of rejecting his own 
 thoughts. ... * Can you tell me,' asked one of his 
 neighbors, while Emerson was lecturing, ' what connection 
 there is between that last sentence and the one that went be- 
 fore it, and what connection it all has with Plato? ' * None, 
 my friend, save in God,' was the reply. . . . As he says 
 of Landor, his sentences are cubes which will stand firm, 
 
528 EMERSON 
 
 place them how or where you will. . . . One of the 
 traces that every critic notices in Emerson's writings is that it 
 is so abrupt, so sudden in its transitions, so discontinuous, so 
 inconsecutive." John Morley. 
 
 " Incompleteness want of beginning, middle, and end is 
 their [Emerson's poems] too common fault." Oliver Wen- 
 dell Holmes. 
 
 "There is a certain impression left on the mind of Emer- 
 son's readers which may be described as fragmentary. 
 Philosophers and prophets do not feel bound to produce epics 
 in twelve books or dramas in five acts or even blank verse 
 poems fifty pages long. When Emerson had had his say in 
 verse he stopped. . . . Emerson as a writer has been 
 compared to that minister who gradually filled a barrel with 
 separately written pages and picked out enough for a sermon 
 when Sunday came. Again, it has been said that Emerson's 
 essays would read as well backward as forward, sentence by 
 sentence. ... In poetry, as in prose, Emerson prepared 
 his bits of material when he would, and afterward elaborated 
 them into symmetrical wholes at leisure or fit occasion." 
 C. F. Richardson. 
 
 "Emerson cannot, I think, with justice be called a great 
 philosophical writer. He cannot build; his arrangement of 
 philosophical ideas has no progress in it, no evolution ; he 
 does not construct a philosophy. . . . Emerson himself 
 formulates perfectly the defect of his own philosophical pro- 
 ductions when he speaks of his ' formidable tendency to the 
 lapidary style.' ' I build my house of bowlders,' he says 
 again, ' with very little system, and as regards composition, 
 with most fragmentary results; paragraphs incompressible, 
 each sentence an infinitely repellent particle.' Nothing can 
 be truer." Matthew Arnold. 
 
 "It [a certain lecture] was as if, after vainly trying to get 
 his paragraphs into sequence and order, he had tried at last 
 the desperate expedient of shuffling them. It was chaos come 
 
EMERSON 529 
 
 again, but it was a chaos full of shooting stars, a jumble of 
 creating forces. ' ' Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The fate of the man-child, 
 The meaning of man ; 
 Known fruit of the unknown ; 
 Daedalian plan ; 
 Out of sleeping a waking, 
 Out of waking a sleep ; 
 Life death overtaking ; 
 Deep underneath deep ? " The Sphinx. 
 
 " Mine and yours ; 
 Mine, not yours. 
 Earth endures ; 
 Stars abide 
 Shine down in the old sea ; 
 Old are the shores ; 
 But where are the old men ? 
 I who have seen much, 
 Such have I never seen." Hamatreya. 
 
 " The rhyme of the poet 
 
 Modulates the king's affairs ; 
 
 Balance-loving Nature 
 
 Made all things in pairs. 
 
 To every foot its antipode ; 
 
 Each color with its counter glowed ; 
 
 To every tone beat answering tones, 
 
 Higher or graver ; 
 
 Flavor gladly blends with flavor ; 
 
 Leaf answers leaf upon the bough ; 
 
 And match the paired cotyledons." Merlin. 
 
 34 
 
BRYANT, 1794-1878 
 
 Biographical Outline. William Cullen Bryant, born 
 November 3, 1794, in Cummington, Mass. ; father a skilful 
 physician and surgeon, of fine literary and musical taste and 
 some knowledge of Greek, Latin, and French, who was for 
 several years a member of the Legislature of Massachusetts ; 
 mother a woman of remarkably sensitive moral judgment; 
 Bryant is precocious as a child, but nervous, puny, and deli- 
 cate ; in 1797 the family remove to Plainfield, a village near 
 Cummington, but return in 1798 to a farm near Cummington 
 owned by Bryant's maternal grandfather ; owing to the ab- 
 sence of schools in the vicinity, Bryant, with his six brothers 
 and sisters, receives his early education mainly from his par- 
 ents, who provided for their children such books as the works 
 of Hume, Plutarch, Shakespeare, and nearly all the acknowl- 
 edged classic English writers of that day; Pope, Cowper, 
 Spenser, and Wordsworth seem to have been Bryant's early 
 favorites ; he once told Parke Godwin that, while yet a boy, he 
 had read "The Faerie Queene " many times through; the 
 children of the family were subjected to severe Puritan disci- 
 pline, and corporal punishment was common ; Bryant worked 
 with his brothers on the grandfather's farm during the sum- 
 mer ; there was little society, and all communication with the 
 outside world was made on horseback ; while living at Cum- 
 mington Bryant attends a district school, where he masters 
 the common branches, and is faithfully drilled in the cate- 
 chism ; he is also taught the rudiments of Latin and French 
 by his father ; Bryant begins to make verses in his eighth 
 year, and, at ten, delivers before his school an address written 
 
 530 
 
BRYANT 531 
 
 in heroic couplets, which is published in the county paper 
 and is used as a stock piece for recitation in other schools ; he 
 is asked by his grandfather to versify the first chapter of Job, 
 and continues till he has versified the whole narrative; Bry- 
 ant's early poetic efforts are ridiculed by his father, but he 
 continues, and his account in verse of the eclipses of 1806 is 
 still preserved ; later he wins his father's favor by an apostro- 
 phe in verse to Jefferson, severely satirizing that statesman, 
 who was intensely disliked by the Federalist physician ; this 
 satire of over five hundred lines was published in Boston in 
 1808 by Bryant's father in pamphlet form under the title 
 " The Embargo, or Sketches of the Times ; a Satire by a 
 Youth of Thirteen ; " the first edition was exhausted in a year, 
 and in 1809 appeared " a second edition, corrected and en- 
 larged, together with the Spanish Revolution and Other Po- 
 ems. By William Cullen Bryant ; " about this time Bryant 
 also writes a creditable metrical version of David's lament over 
 Saul and Jonathan, his first effort in blank verse. 
 
 In November, 1808, he goes to reside with his uncle, the 
 Rev. Thomas Snell, at Brookfield, Mass., and there begins 
 preparation for college ; he soon develops ability to read diffi- 
 cult Latin, and, at his father's request, renders parts of the 
 "^Eneid" into English verse; he begins Mrs. Radcliffe's 
 ' Romance of the Forest, ' ' but is dissuaded by his uncle, who 
 tells him that such works have " an unwholesome influence ; " 
 he has Amasa Walker as a fellow-student under Dr. SnelPs in- 
 struction ; in eight months Bryant reads all of the " ^Eneid," 
 the " Eclogues," the " Georgics," and Cicero's " Orations ; " 
 he spends the summer of 1809 working in the hayfield on 
 his grandfather's farm, and is reproved for resting from his 
 work to " make varses ; " in August, 1809, Bryant goes to 
 the Rev. Moses Hallock, of Plainfield, Mass., to learn Greek, 
 and pays one dollar a week for board and tuition ; he makes 
 such rapid progress that, as he says, " At the end of two 
 calendar months I knew the Greek New Testament from 
 
532 BRYANT 
 
 end to end almost as if it had been English ; " he returns to 
 Cummington late in October, 1809, and there continues his 
 college preparatory studies during the winter without a tutor ; 
 in the spring of 1810 he returns for a time to Plainfield, where 
 he is instructed in mathematics by Hallock ; in September, 
 1 8 10, Bryant attends, with his father, the Commencement 
 exercises at Williams College, and easily passes examinations 
 admitting him as a Sophomore. 
 
 He enters Williams October 8, 1810 ; at that time the col- 
 lege Faculty consisted of the president, one professor, and two 
 tutors; Bryant says in his "Autobiography: " "I mastered 
 the daily lesson given out to my class, and found much time 
 for miscellaneous reading, for disputations [in a literary so- 
 ciety], and for literary composition in prose and verse ; " in 
 the summer of 1811, before the close of his first year at Will- 
 iams, Bryant, influenced by the example of his room-mate, 
 John Avery, decides to enter Yale, obtains from Williams an 
 honorable dismissal, and returns, in May, 1811, to his home 
 at Cummington, where he studies to prepare himself for enter- 
 ing the Junior Class at Yale ; however, for financial reasons, 
 his father finds it impossible to send the son to Yale, and so 
 Bryant's college career is comprised in the part of a year at 
 Williams, which he afterward regretted leaving ; while study- 
 ing at home at this period he becomes interested in his father's 
 medical books, and acquires from them a considerable knowl- 
 edge of chemistry and botany " meantime I read all the 
 poetry that came in my way ; ' ' while at Williams he had 
 rendered Anacreon's " Ode on Spring " with such merit that 
 his college-mates mistook it for Moore's, with which they 
 compared it, both being unsigned ; he continues his Greek 
 studies after leaving college, making translations in prose 
 from Lucian and in verse from Anacreon, Mimnernus, Colo- 
 phon, Bion, and Sophocles ; Bryant also now renews his long 
 rambles in field and forest, and, inspired by Kirk White's 
 " Melodies of Death," he writes ' ' Thanatopsis, " beginning 
 
BRYANT 533 
 
 the first sketch with the line, " Yet a few days," etc. ; " Than- 
 atopsis " was written in October, 1811, but the manuscript 
 was carefully hidden in Bryant's father's desk, without being 
 subjected to criticism or inspection. 
 
 Bryant was originally intended for the practice of medicine 
 the profession of his ancestors for three generations but 
 later his father decided to make him a lawyer, and in Decem- 
 ber, 1811, the son enters the law office of one Mr. Howe, of 
 Worthington, Mass.; he studies with fair diligence, but con- 
 tinues to versify and botanize ; he is strongly inspired by 
 reading Wordsworth's "Lyrical Ballads," but his legal pre- 
 ceptor warns him against such reading as a "sad waste of 
 time;" during 1812-13 Bryant writes but one poem, a 
 Fourth of July ode, written at the request of a Boston society, 
 made through Bryant's father ; while at Worthington, Pryant 
 is fascinated by the daughter of a distinguished friend of his 
 father's, and writes fragments of love- verses (never published), 
 but the relationship is soon broken off; in June, 1814, he 
 removes to the law office of Mr. William Baylies, of Bridge- 
 water, Mass., a much larger town than Worthington ; he is 
 most eager to finish his legal course in Boston, but his father's 
 financial circumstances will not permit it ; Bryant devotes 
 himself closely to study at Bridgewater, determining, as he 
 wrote to a friend, " to tune the rural lay no more, 
 but leave the race of bards to scribble, starve, and freeze; " 
 he writes another Fourth of July ode in 1814, deploring our 
 war with England and denouncing Napoleon ; he is entrusted 
 with the business of the office during the absence of his pre- 
 ceptor in Congress ; he passes the preliminary test for ad- 
 mission to the bar August 9, 1814; in correspondence with 
 his preceptor at this time, Bryant manifests a warm interest 
 in public affairs ; he even proposes to enter the army, but an 
 attack of pulmonary disease compels him to go home and 
 spend the month of November at Cummington ; during the 
 intense political struggle of the day Bryant becomes a rabid 
 
534 BRYANT 
 
 Federalist, and speaks of President Madison as "his imbe- 
 cility ;" he proposes to join the State militia, "being 
 ashamed to stay at home when everybody besides was gone, ' ' 
 and foreseeing, he thinks, a civil war ; he is appointed an ad- 
 jutant in the Massachusetts militia in July, 1816, but the 
 Peace of Ghent causes his services to be uncalled for. 
 
 He passes his final legal examination and is admitted to the 
 Court of Common Pleas August 15, 1815; at this time he 
 again devotes himself to a minute study of nature, and sketches 
 several nature poems; he writes "The Yellow Violet " just 
 before his admission to the bar, and the " Inscription for the 
 Entrance to a Wood " about the same time; in December, 
 1815, on his way to Plainfield, Mass., where he proposed to 
 settle as a lawyer, he sees a wild duck flying homeward and, 
 while walking, composes the lines " To a Waterfowl ; " after 
 remaining eight months at Plainfield, he removes to Great 
 Barrington, Mass., where he becomes a partner of one G. H. 
 Ives ; soon afterward he suffers a second attack of pulmonary 
 disease ; he is urged by his father to contribute in prose or 
 verse to the North American Review, then recently estab- 
 lished in Boston and edited by Phillips, a friend of Bryant's 
 father ; but Bryant does not respond, having apparently re- 
 solved to abandon the muses ; meanwhile the father discovers 
 the manuscript of " Thanatopsis " and himself carries it to 
 Phillips ; R. H. Dana, then one of the owners of the Review, 
 declares the manuscript an imposture and says, " No one on 
 this side of the Atlantic is capable of writing such verses ; ' ' 
 ' ' Thanatopsis ' ' was first published in the North American 
 Review for September, 1817, and was then prefixed with four 
 stanzas on death, found by Bryant's father with the manu- 
 script, but having no connection with the poem and not in- 
 tended by Bryant for publication ; this forbidding introduction 
 prevented " Thanatopsis " from attracting much attention at 
 first except from the critics, who still supposed it to have been 
 written by Bryant's father; in July, 1818, Bryant publishes 
 
BRYANT 535 
 
 in the Review an essay on American poetry, being a review 
 of a collection of American verses then just published ; in this 
 article he " dismisses the poetical pretensions of the rhymers 
 who were then in vogue ; " in 1819 he publishes in the Re- 
 view an essay on " Trisyllabic Feet in Iambic Verse." 
 
 While in Great Harrington he holds successively the offices 
 of tithing-man, town-clerk, and Justice of the Peace; his 
 father dies of pulmonary disease in March, 1820; early in 
 1820 Bryant promises to contribute several hymns to a Uni- 
 tarian collection then forming ; later he delivers at Stock- 
 bridge, Mass., a Fourth of July oration, in which he makes 
 his first public protest against slavery ; during 1820 he also 
 contributes to The Idle Man (a periodical then just established 
 by Dana) " The Yellow Violet " and " Green River," the 
 latter poem having been picked out of his waste-basket ; later 
 he contributes to the same periodical "A Winter Piece," 
 " The West Wind," " The Burial Place," and " A Walk at 
 Sunset ; " during 1820 Bryant becomes betrothed to Miss 
 Fanny Fairchild, the orphaned daughter of a well-to-do 
 farmer living near Great Barrington, and they are married at 
 that village June n, 1821 ; soon after his marriage Bryant 
 is invited to deliver the usual poetical address before the Phi 
 Beta Kappa society of Harvard University at the next Com- 
 mencement ; he complies, and reads at Harvard, August 20, 
 1821, the poem entitled " The Ages ; " while in Boston he 
 first meets the Danas, the Channings, and other prominent 
 people, and has in his audience Allston, both the Adamses, 
 the Quinceys, Story, Webster, and Edward Everett ; while 
 there he also yields to the importunity of Dana and others, 
 and prepares for publication a pamphlet of forty-four pages, 
 containing eight of the best of his poems, namely : " The 
 Ages," " To a Waterfowl," " A Fragment from Simonides," 
 " An Inscription for an Entrance to a Wood," " The Yellow 
 Violet," "Green River," "The Song," and " Thanatopsis " 
 " such poems as had never appeared before in American lit- 
 
536 BRYANT 
 
 erature ; " the same year (1821) gave birth to some of the 
 best productions of Cooper, Irving, Halleck, Dana, Percival, 
 Channing, and Webster ; Bryant's pamphlet received recogni- 
 tion in Blackwood's Magazine ; he is urged by Dana and others 
 to write a long poem, but he refuses, insisting that " there is no 
 such thing as a long poem ; " in 1823 he writes a farce, satir- 
 izing the practice of duelling, then common at the South ; it 
 is submitted for criticism to Henry Sedgwick, who advises 
 against publication, but incidentally urges Bryant to settle in 
 New York and to become a contributor to the Atlantic Maga- 
 zine, then published there; Bryant accordingly visits New 
 York on a tour of inspection in April, 1824, and there meets 
 Cooper, Halleck, and Sparks ; during 1823-25 he contributes 
 to the then newly established United States Literary Gazette 
 (Boston) nearly thirty poems, including " Monument Moun- 
 tain," " November," " To a Cloud," "The Lapse of Time," 
 "A Forest Hymn," "March," "The Rivulet," "Autumn 
 Woods," and " After the Tempest ; " for such work Bryant 
 asks but $2 a poem, but the editor offered him $200 a year for 
 an average of one hundred lines a month ; his profits on his 
 first book of poems are less than $15 ; to the same magazine, 
 at the same time, an unknown writer signing himself " H. W. 
 L." contributes several poems, as does Percival ; the pub- 
 lishers of the Gazette soon afterward issue a volume of " Mis- 
 cellaneous Poems," including the work of all three poets ; 
 about this time Bryant begins but never finishes a longer nar- 
 rative poem entitled "The Spectre Ship; " he writes also 
 numerous reviews of American literature current at the time. 
 
 Although he is successful and, by 1824, has argued cases 
 before the Supreme Court of Massachusetts, he continually 
 manifests a disposition to leave law for literature ; he visits 
 New York again in January, 1825, meets many literary men, 
 and an attempt is made to found a new magazine with Bryant 
 as editor, but the project fails, partially because he is a Uni- 
 tarian ; he returns to New York in March, 1825, when The 
 
BRYANT 537 
 
 Atlantic Magazine and The Literary Review are merged into 
 The New York Review, with Bryant as joint editor with H. 
 J. Anderson, former editor of The Atlantic Magazine ; Bryant 
 leaves his family in Great Barrington, and takes lodgings in 
 New York, but is joined by his family in the autumn ; in 
 April, 1825, he delivers before the Athenaeum Society of New 
 York four lectures on Poetry; during the winters of 1827, 
 1828, 1829, and 1831, he lectures on Mythology before the 
 then newly formed National Academy of Arts ; meantime he 
 publishes in his New York Review his poems entitled " The 
 Song of Pitcairn's Island," " The Skies," "Lines on Re- 
 visiting a Cemetery," " I Cannot Forget," "To a Mos- 
 quito," " The Death of the Flowers," " The New Moon," 
 "A Hymn to Death," "An Indian Girl's Lament," and 
 "A Meditation on Rhode Island Coal," besides many prose 
 articles, chiefly critical ; the Review changes names twice 
 during 1826, and gradually expires ; meantime Bryant takes 
 out a license to practise in the courts of New York, and does 
 some legal work in connection with Henry Sedgwick ; dur- 
 ing the summer of 1826 he becomes temporarily editor of the 
 Evening Post, pending the decision of Dana, to whom the 
 editorship had been offered ; he acts as subordinate editor 
 during 1827 and 1828, finding the work, at least financially, 
 "better than poetry and magazines;" during 1828, 1829, 
 and 1830 he edits an annual called "The Talisman," to 
 which he contributes his poems entitled "To the Past," 
 "The Evening Wind," and several others ; on the death of 
 the chief editor and owner of the Evening Post, in July, 1829, 
 Bryant becomes chief editor and a partial owner ; he strongly 
 supports President Jackson, and once inflicts corporal chastise- 
 ment on a political adversary ; he writes almost no poetry 
 from 1829 to 1835 ; in 1831 he publishes a volume contain- 
 ing eighty poems all he had written since his pamphlet of 
 1821; this volume serves to place Bryant, in the opinion 
 (then expressed) of critics like Longfellow and Prescott, " at 
 
538 BRYANT 
 
 the head of our poetic literature; " through the good offices 
 of Irving, then living in England, Bryant's poems are re- 
 printed in London in March, 1832, with a dedication (written 
 by Irving) to Samuel Rogers ; the volume is well received in 
 England, being highly praised by Professor Wilson in Black- 
 wood 's Magazine. 
 
 During the spring of 1832 Bryant visits his brothers, who 
 had settled in Illinois, and, while there, accidentally meets 
 Lincoln, then "a tall, awkward, uncouth lad," leading a 
 company of volunteers to the Blackhawk Indian War ; on his 
 return he settles with his family in Hoboken, N. J., to avoid 
 the cholera, then raging in New York, but he remains at his 
 post as editor throughout that terrible summer ; he warmly 
 supports President Jackson's Union proclamation in Decem- 
 ber, 1832 ; he also supports Jackson in his memorable struggle 
 against the United States Bank, and thus incurs much popular 
 hostility; he visits Canada, with his wife, in 1833; early in 
 1834 Bryant and his paper are frequently threatened with 
 violence by anti-abolition mobs ; he sails for France, June 24, 
 1834, spends several weeks in Paris, Lyons, and Marseilles, 
 and goes thence to Italy, where he remains four months, 
 chiefly at Rome, Naples, Florence, and Pisa ; thence by the 
 Tyrol to Munich for three months, and thence to Heidelberg for 
 four months ; he meets Longfellow in Heidelberg, and reaches 
 home March 26, 1836; on his return he declines a public 
 dinner offered him by Irving, Halleck, and others, and begins 
 his life-long struggle for international copyright; in 1836 he 
 publishes another edition of his poems, this time through the 
 Harpers, and receives $125 for the first twenty-five hundred 
 copies ; he grows weary of journalism and of city life, and 
 seriously proposes to remove to the prairies of Illinois ; he 
 becomes unpopular by his editorial opposition to " fiat money," 
 usury laws, and the slave-trade, and suffers some social ostra- 
 cism ; he first meets Parke Godwin in 1836, and soon afterward 
 employs him as an assistant editor; in 1837 Bryant opposes 
 
BRYANT 539 
 
 the attitude of his friend, President Van Buren, toward slavery, 
 but supports his financial policy; in August, 1837, he is 
 challenged to a duel by one Holland, an editor of the Times, 
 but avoids the trouble by a skilful reply ; in his long walks 
 about New York he becomes " a most indefatigable tramp ; " 
 he frequently entertains Cooper, Halleck, Longfellow, and 
 Audubon, and brings out Dana's "Two Years before the 
 Mast " after the manuscript has been repeatedly rejected ; he 
 vigorously satirizes "the singing campaign" of Harrison in 
 
 1840 ; during the summer he roams through the Catskills with 
 Cole, the artist, and with Cole names many of the wild points 
 in that region (see Bryant's poem " The Catterskill Falls ") ; 
 he incurs popular hostility for refusing to put his paper into 
 mourning dress on the death of Harrison ; in the spring of 
 
 1841 he again visits Illinois, where the wolves were still howl- 
 ing on the prairies ; in 1842 he vigorously opposes " the 
 black tariff," and both lectures and writes in support of 
 homoeopathy ; during February of this year he is formally 
 entertained at a breakfast given in his honor by Dickens, 
 whose first inquiry after landing was, " Where is Bryant?" 
 Bryant afterward entertains Dickens at his own home, and 
 later publishes, at the request of Dickens, the address of the 
 latter to the American people in favor of international copy- 
 right ; during 1842 Bryant also prepares a new volume of his 
 poems, the Harpers having then sold five editions of the earlier 
 volume; the new volume includes "The Painted Cup," 
 "The Antiquity of Freedom," "The Fountain," "An 
 Evening Reverie," and sixteen others written since his return 
 from Europe ; in the spring of 1843 he makes a tour through 
 the South, spends a month among the cotton-planters of South 
 Carolina, listening to their defence of their favorite " Institu- 
 tion," and then revels in the delights of a tropical spring in 
 Florida ; during the same spring he buys " forty acres of 
 solid earth ... on the north side of Long Island," 
 to which he gives the name of Roslyn, for a country home. 
 
540 BRYANT 
 
 111 the summer of 1843 Bryant joins David Dudley Field 
 and others in publishing a manifesto against the annexation of 
 Texas ; he sails again for Europe, April 22, 1845, in company 
 with Charles Leupp, an artist friend; he lands at Liverpool, 
 visits James Martineau, and reaches London in June; he is 
 given a public dinner in London by Edward Everett, then our 
 British Minister, and meets there Samuel Rogers, Monckton 
 Milnes, Thomas Moore, and other literary lights ; later he 
 meets Cobden, Bright, Fox, Hallam, Lyell, Whewell, Fara- 
 day, and Herschel (the last five at Cambridge) ; Bryant takes 
 up his residence at Leamington, whence he makes long pedes- 
 trian and carriage tours to Oxford, Blenheim, Warwick, etc. ; 
 he meets Wordsworth at Windermere in July, being presented 
 by Crabbe Robinson ; he goes thence to Edinburgh, Ireland, 
 London, and Paris ; thence by way of the Netherland cities 
 to Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Leipsic, Berlin, Dresden, Prague, 
 Vienna, Trieste, Venice, Florence, Rome, Naples, Genoa, 
 Milan, walking over the Simplon by moonlight, and so to 
 Geneva and back to Paris and London (see his " Letters of 
 Travel ") ; he returns to New York and to his home at Roslyn 
 in November, 1845; during 1845-46 Bryant writes ''The 
 Stream of Life," ''The Unknown Way," and " The Wander- 
 ing Moon," and prepares a new edition of his older poetry, 
 first submitting all his poems to the criticism of his friend 
 Dana, with the intention of omitting from the new edition 
 any disapproved by Dana ; Bryant adopts most of Dana's 
 suggestions and, by his advice, omits none of the poems ; 
 during the year 1846 he again visits his mother and brothers in 
 Illinois, and returns by way of Lake Michigan and Mackinaw ; 
 the new volume of poems appears in December, and is received 
 with unabated public favor; during 1846, Bryant also begins 
 his correspondence with Longfellow; in May, 1847, he loses 
 his mother, to whom he refers in the poem beginning " May 
 Sun sheds an amber light." 
 
 During the summer of 1847 he vists Boston, Portland, 
 
BRYANT 541 
 
 Augusta, and the White Mountains, which he declares equal 
 to those of Switzerland except for the snow-capped peaks ; on 
 May 4, 1848, Bryant delivers, by invitation of the Academy 
 of Design, a glowing eulogy on his friend Thomas Cole, 
 the artist; in the summer of 1848 he joins with the editors 
 of several other prominent journals in a call for a conven- 
 tion of " all who are in favor of free soil, free speech, free 
 labor, and free men," and later he becomes a fervent sup- 
 porter of Van Buren in his presidential campaign ; early in 
 1849 Bryant secures John Bigelow as an assistant editor of 
 the Post, and thus obtains more leisure for travel ; he starts 
 for Cuba in March, 1849, stopping in South Carolina and 
 Florida, and reaching Havana April yth; spends a month in 
 Cuba, where the treatment of the slaves greatly intensifies his 
 feeling against the "institution;" soon after returning to 
 New York he starts, June 13, 1849, on a third trip to Europe, 
 again having Leupp as a companion ; he spends much time 
 in the public and private picture galleries of London ; thence 
 to the Orkney and Shetland Islands by way of Edinburgh 
 and Perth, and thence to the Continent, which he finds 
 " filled with soldiers ; " to Munich by way of Stuttgart, thence 
 to Switzerland, and back to New York in December ; soon 
 after his return he publishes, at the request of G. P. Putnam, 
 a volume of his letters of travel, written from Illinois, Mack- 
 inaw, the South, Cuba, and Europe; he devotes much time 
 to the improvement of his estate at Roslyn, to which he 
 becomes devotedly attached ; in 1850 he strongly opposes 
 Henry Clay's "Compromise Measure." 
 
 In February, 1852, at the request of the New York His- 
 torical Society, Bryant delivers an address on Cooper, then 
 lately deceased, Webster being the presiding officer on the 
 occasion, and Irving one of the guests; in 1852, becoming 
 disgusted with the indifference of the Free Soil party toward 
 slavery and the tariff, Bryant supports Pierce in his presi- 
 dential campaign ; late in this year he abandons Pierce, and 
 
542 BRYANT 
 
 becomes a warm supporter of the Free Soil movement in 
 Kansas; in November, 1852, he sails for the Orient, with 
 Leupp again as a companion ; while passing through London 
 he meets "a blue-stocking lady who writes for the West- 
 minster Review, named Evans, and a Mr. Spenser, a book- 
 seller ; " he is in Paris on the day of the proclamation of the 
 second empire ; thence, by way of Lyons, Marseilles, Genoa, 
 Naples, and Malta, to Alexandria ; thence to Cairo and up the 
 Nile as far as the first Cataract ; thence on camel-back across 
 " the little desert," reaching Jerusalem February 13, 1853; he 
 visits Nazareth, Tyre, Damascus, etc., and crosses from Beyrut 
 to Constantinople; thence to Smyrna, Athens, Corinth, 
 Trieste, Venice, etc., back to Paris, and reaches home in 
 June, 1853, completely disguised in a long white beard, and 
 " begins grinding at the mill again " (see his " Letters from 
 the East"); late in 1854 he issues another volume of his 
 poems, this time through the Appletons, who become his pub- 
 lishers thenceforth. 
 
 In 185455 he takes an active part in forming the Repub- 
 lican Party ; he continues his support of the Kansas Free Soil 
 movement, and supports Fremont in the campaign of 1856; 
 he starts, with his wife, on a fifth voyage to Europe, May 7, 
 1857, hoping thus to improve her health; they visit Paris, 
 Heidelberg, southern France, and Spain, where Bryant meets 
 Emilio Castelar; on reaching Naples he is detained four 
 months by Mrs. Bryant's illness ; while there he reads much 
 Italian literature, and writes "The Sick Bed," "The River 
 by Night," " The Life that Is," and " A Day Dream ;" he 
 revisits Rome, and there first familiarly meets Hawthorne ; he 
 meets him again at Florence at the home of the Brownings, 
 where both were guests ; he meets Landor also at Florence, 
 and later renews at Paris his intimate acquaintance with the 
 Brownings; while in Paris he declines a proffered appoint- 
 ment as one of the Regents of the University of the State of 
 New York; he returns to this country September 9, 1858, 
 
BRYANT 543 
 
 with Mrs. Bryant improved in health; during the summer of 
 1859 he foresees the seriousness of the impending war, and 
 predicts the erection of a monument to John Brown within 
 ten years ; he presides on the occasion of Lincoln's first speech 
 in New York, and afterward supports him as a nominee for 
 the presidency; during 1859, saddened by the loss of several 
 friends, he writes " The Cloud on the Way," " Waiting by the 
 Gate," "The New and Old," and "The Third of Novem- 
 ber;" during 1860, impressed by the deaths of Humboldt, 
 Macaulay, Irving, Prescott, DeQuincey, and others, he writes 
 "The Constellations;" April 3, 1860, he delivers a eulogy 
 on Irving, at the request of the New York Historical Society, 
 and is followed by Edward Everett ; he is made a member of 
 the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1861 ; in the autumn 
 of 1860 he visits friends in western Maryland, where he finds 
 Lincoln flags flying; during the summer of 1860 he supports 
 Lincoln against Seward for the presidential nomination, and 
 writes to Lincoln after the nomination, urging him to "make 
 no speeches, . . . enter into no pledges," etc.; after 
 Lincoln's election he strongly urges the selection of Chase as 
 Secretary of State; he also approves of Welles and opposes 
 Cameron as members of the Cabinet; he has an interview with 
 Lincoln on his way to his inaugural ; he vigorously opposes 
 the ideas of compromise suggested after the first battle of Bull 
 Run; early during the Civil War he writes "Not Yet," a 
 poem addressed to Southern sympathizers in Europe, and 
 " Our Country's Call," which greatly aided Lincoln in his 
 appeal for recruits. 
 
 Early in 1861 Bryant expresses himself in favor of emanci- 
 pation, and presides at a New York emancipation meeting 
 addressed by Owen Lovejoy ; he approves Fremont's procla- 
 mation of freedom in August, 1861 ; he becomes an intimate 
 counsellor of Secretary Chase, and strongly opposes the issue 
 of "greenbacks," urging instead a uniform banking system, 
 based on government securities and a system of direct taxa- 
 
544 BRYANT 
 
 tion, and clearly foretelling the evil that has since resulted 
 from the " greenback" issue; he also remonstrates with 
 Lincoln, vehemently urging him not to sign the bill to issue 
 the United States legal tender notes ; he also remonstrates 
 against the tardiness of McClellan ; in a personal visit to 
 Lincoln, at Washington, in August, 1862, he opposes the idea 
 of centralizing our troops against Richmond ; during the 
 winter of 1862-63 ne seeks relief from the horrors of war by 
 writing his fairy poems, " Sela," " The Little People of the 
 Snow," and an incomplete poem entitled " A Tale of Cloud- 
 land ; " in July, 1863, he aids in defending the Evening Post 
 building during the " draft riots; " later in the same winter 
 he writes " The Poet " and " The Path," and begins, at first 
 in a fragmentary way, his great translation of Homer; he 
 publishes his translation of the Fifth Book of the ' < Odyssey ' ' in 
 the Atlantic Monthly, and later collects his more recent poems, 
 including this translation and " The Rain Dream," into a vol- 
 ume with the title "Thirty Poems;" during 1863 he also 
 writes "The Return of the Birds" and " My Autumn Walk ; " 
 although these poems express a love of peace, Bryant vehe- 
 mently opposes the talk of compromise after Gettysburg, 
 and as vehemently condemns any attempt to punish free 
 speech on either side ; in October, 1864, he contributes to the 
 Atlantic Monthly the poem "My Autumn Walk," with the 
 note, " Ask me for no more poetry. . . . Nobody in the years 
 after seventy can produce anything in poetry save the- thick 
 and muddy last running of the cask from which all the clear 
 and sprightly liquor has been already drawn; " as his views 
 on finance and emancipation gradually prove to have been 
 correct, Bryant and his paper become more widely popular ; 
 Godwin declares that, during the war, the income from the 
 Post for a year was a considerable fortune ; Bryant spends 
 large amounts in charity and in the improvement of Roslyn, 
 planting there every known tree and shrub that the soil and 
 climate would permit ; his seventieth birthday, November 3, 
 
BRYANT 545 
 
 1864, is widely celebrated, and is publicly commemorated by 
 the Century Club of New York, an organization of which 
 Bryant had been one of the founders ; Bancroft, Bayard Tay- 
 lor, Holmes, Emerson, Stoddard, Julia Ward Howe, Whit- 
 tier, and many others take part, and Lowell writes for the 
 occasion "Our Bard of Seventy-six." 
 
 Early in 1865 Bryant addresses to the soldiers of the Union 
 Army an open letter, commending them for their work Curing 
 1864 ; about the same time he also urges strongly a constitu- 
 tional amendment abolishing slavery throughout the United 
 States ; on the death of Lincoln Bryant is strongly urged by 
 Whittier, Holmes, and others to prepare a memoir of Lincoln, 
 but he declines on the ground that he is too near Lincoln, in 
 time, to write impartially ; in the summer of 1865 he declines 
 to write a poem for the Commencement of Williams College, 
 declaring that " youth is the time for such imprudences ; " 
 about the same time he writes his poem entitled " The Death 
 of Slavery," which has been called the nation's hymn of 
 thanksgiving ; in the summer of 1865 he buys the old farm 
 and homestead at Cummington, Mass., where he was born, 
 and remodels it for a summer home, hoping thus to improve 
 his wife's failing health; he invites all his relatives from Illi- 
 nois to be present at the ceremony of " hanging the pot," but 
 Mrs. Bryant dies at Roslyn July 27, 1866, before ever taking 
 possession of the new house ; during 1866 Bryant vigorously 
 advocates liberal treatment of the seceding States, and insists 
 on federal protection of the negroes in their civil rights ; vis- 
 iting Cummington in October, 1866, he writes there his lines 
 entitled "October, 1866," and soon afterward starts on his 
 sixth trip to Europe, with his second daughter, Julia, as a com- 
 panion ; about the same time he decides to seek relief from his 
 great sorrow in completing his translation of Homer ; he buys 
 a pocket edition of the Greek poet, and sets himself the task of 
 forty lines a day ; he spends several weeks in southern France, 
 Spain, and Italy, and meets Lord Lytton and Garibaldi while in 
 35 
 
546 BRYANT 
 
 Florence ; after several months in Rome they return to Paris 
 by way of Munich and the principal German cities, and thence 
 through England to Roslyn September 9, 1867 ; Bryant passes 
 most of the succeeding autumn and winter " trifling with Ho- 
 mer ; " he is tendered a public dinner in New York, January 
 30, 1868, by the Free Trade League, of which he had long 
 been president ; he continues his translation of Homer during 
 1878, consulting other translations only on questions of con- 
 struction ; in February, 1869, he prepares and reads before 
 the New York Historical Society an address on Halleck, who 
 died in 1867 ; in June, 1869, he responds to a toast at the 
 Alumni dinner of Williams College ; during 1868-69 ne writes 
 the hymns " A Brighter Day," " Among the Trees," and " A 
 May Evening, ' ' and collects and publishes his "Letters from the 
 East ; " he completes his translation of the " Iliad " January 4, 
 1870; Volume I. is published February 19, and Volume II. 
 June 15, 1870 ; while reading the proofs Bryant discovers that 
 some lines have been omitted, and so he revises the whole 
 work, comparing line by line with the original ; the " Iliad " 
 proves to be a popular success ; during 1870 he assists in pre- 
 paring the anthology entitled " A Library of Poetry and Song," 
 his work consisting mainly in revising the selections made by 
 assistant editors, rejecting several, and suggesting some poems; 
 he begins translating the " Odyssey " in July, 1870 ; he com- 
 pletes the first book of the " Odyssey " in April, 1871, and the 
 second before the close of that year ; Volume I. of the " Odys- 
 sey " was published September 20, 1871, and Volume II. Sep- 
 tember 20. 1872 ; Bryant also makes several public addresses 
 during 1871 ; in his later years he spends the winter in New 
 York City, the spring and early summer at Roslyn, and the late 
 summer at Cummington ; during most of his life he rises at half- 
 past five, or before, in winter, and at five o'clock in summer; he 
 begins his day regularly with an hour or more of vigorous exer- 
 cise with light dumb-bells, etc. ; while in New York he walks 
 at least six miles a day " whatever the weather or the state of the 
 
BRYANT 547 
 
 streets ; " he uses neither tobacco, tea, nor coffee, very little 
 meat, and less wine. 
 
 In January, 1872, accompanied by his daughter, his brother 
 John, and other friends, he sails for Nassau, and thence, after 
 two weeks, to Havana, where he receives public attentions ; 
 thence, late in February, to Mexico, where he is made a mem- 
 ber of learned societies, and inspects many early historical rec- 
 ords ; after several weeks in Mexico, the party return by way 
 of Havana and New Orleans, and reach home in April, 1873 ; 
 in the summer of 1873 he erects for his native town of Cum- 
 mington a public library building, which he stocks with six 
 thousand carefully selected volumes ; during this year he often 
 walks eighteen miles a day about Cummington ; during the 
 winter of 1872 73, at the request of the publisher, Mr. Putnam, 
 he collects an edition of his orations and speeches ; with his 
 daughter, Mrs. Godwin, he visits Florida late in the winter of 
 1873 ; during that year he and Longfellow are made members 
 of the Russian Academy, Tennyson being the only other con- 
 temporary poet then holding that honor ; he speaks at Prince- 
 ton College in July, 1873, and makes several public addresses 
 during 1874; his eightieth birthday, November 3, 1874, is hon- 
 ored by many friends, especially in Chicago and New York, an 
 elaborate silver vase commemorative of Bryant's life being pre- 
 sented in New York ; during 1875 he revises his Anthology, and 
 undertakes a new edition of Shakespeare, aided by E. A. Duy- 
 ckinck; though knowing Shakespeare's plays almost by heart, 
 Bryant re-reads them all and compares carefully the various 
 editions then existing ; owing to delay with the illustrations, 
 this work was not published during Bryant's lifetime ; early 
 in 1875 he calls a meeting in New York to protest against the 
 invasion of the legislature of Louisiana by the federal forces, 
 and addresses it "with the vehemence and fire of a man of 
 thirty; " later he is officially entertained at Albany by his old 
 friend Samuel J. Tilden, then recently elected Governor ; Bry- 
 ant retains his power of memory almost as marvellous as that 
 
548 BRYANT 
 
 of Macaulay till his latest days ; early in December, 1875, 
 he entertains at Roslyn Lord Houghton (Monckton Milnes) ; 
 about the same time he writes " Christmas in 1875 " and " A 
 Life-Time; " during 1876 he writes the hymn for the Phila- 
 delphia Centennial Exposition, and assists in entertaining the 
 Emperor Dom Pedro of Brazil ; during 1877 he takes part in 
 ceremonies connected with the erection of a monument to 
 Halleck, and speaks at the Commencement exercises of La- 
 Fayette College; during 1878, his last year, he keeps up his 
 long walks, speaks at many public meetings, and is more viva- 
 cious and cheerful than ever before in his life; on May 29, 
 1878, he delivers, at Central Park, New York, a speech at the 
 unveiling of a monument to Mazzini ; while speaking he exposes 
 himself to the sun, and, soon afterward, on entering the home 
 of an acquaintance near the Park, he falls and seriously injures 
 his head ; he remains in a semi-conscious condition till his 
 death, in his New York home, June 12, 1878. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BRYANT. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 
 
 36-39. 
 Stedman, E. C, "Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
 
 flin & Co., 62-95. 
 Symington, A. J., "William Cullen Bryant, a Biographical Sketch." 
 
 New York, 1880. 
 Godwin, P., "Biography of William Cullen Bryant." New York, 
 
 1883, Appleton, v. index. 
 Saunders, F., "Character Studies." New York, 1891, Whittaker, 
 
 133-152. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., " Thoughts on the Poets." Boston, 1846, Francis, 
 
 303-318. 
 
 Taylor, B., "Critical Essays." New York, 1880, Putnam, 258-277. 
 Godwin, P., "Out of the Past." New York, 1870, Putnam, 9-22. 
 Poe, E. A., "Works." New York, 1855, Redfield, 3: 178-188. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, i: 
 
 52-53- 
 
 Bigelow, J., "William Cullen Bryant." Boston, 1890, Houghton, 
 Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
 
BRYANT 549 
 
 Hill, D. J., "William Cullen Bryant." New York, 1879, Sheldon & 
 
 Co., v. index. 
 Osgood, S., " Bryant Among his Countrymen." New York, 1879, 
 
 Putnam, 1-32. 
 Wilson, J. G., "Bryant and His Friends." New York, 1886, Fords, 
 
 Howard Hulbert, v. index 
 Wilson, J., "Essays, Critical and Imaginative." Edinburgh, 1856, 
 
 Blackwood, 191-223. 
 
 Bartlett, D. W., " Modern Agitators." Auburn, N.Y., Miller, 183-191. 
 Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
 
 2= 35-49- 
 Lowell, J. R., "A Fable for Critics." (Poetical Works.) Boston, 
 
 1890, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 113-151. 
 Whittier, J. G., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1892, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 468. 
 Shepard, W. S., "The Literary Life." New York, 1886, Putnam, 
 
 98 119. 
 
 Lippincotfs Magazine, 44: 698-712 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Unitarian Review, 33 : 346-357 (J. Benton). 
 Dial (Chicago), ii: 31-33 (O. F. Emerson). 
 Critic, 3 : 101-102 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Nation, 36 : 366-367 (A. G. Sedgwick). 
 Appleton's Journal, 6 : 477-480 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 42 : 747-748 (E. C. Stedman). 
 North American Revinv, 55: 500-510 (G. S. Hillard). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 . Dignity Reserve Elevation Serenity. 
 
 " His general tone toward society is harsh. In his poems he 
 continually speaks of escaping from the crowd, of despising 
 the frivolity of society, of hating the every-day work by which 
 man, in this life, keeps up that interesting and slightly im- 
 portant connection between body and soul called ' getting a 
 living.' . . . As a poet, his nature is not broad, sensi- 
 tive, and genial, but intense, serious, and deep. He appears 
 rather to have for it [the real concrete life of the nation] a 
 subtle and supercilious antipathy, when, as a poet, he gives 
 himself up to the influences of nature. . . . The healing 
 power there is in Bryant's philosophic meditation on life, the 
 
BRYANT 
 
 fine avenues through which his thought penetrates to what is 
 deepest in the soul, and the beautiful serenity he not only 
 feels but communicates, are all well illustrated in his poem on 
 < The Return of Youth.' ". P. Whipple. 
 
 "His sentiment was unsentimental; he never whined nor 
 found fault with condition or nature ; he was robust, but not 
 tyrannical ; frugal, but not too severe ; grave, but full of 
 humor. . . . The delights of nature and meditations on 
 the universality of life and death withdrew him from the study 
 of the individual world. . . . The most fervent social 
 passions of his song are those of friendship, of filial and fra- 
 ternal love ; his intellectual passion is always under restraint, 
 even when moved by patriotism, liberty, religious faith." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified, 
 As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 
 Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights 
 With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 " This steady flow of thought and purpose, beneath a calm 
 exterior, untossed by storm and passion, marks Bryant's poet- 
 ical work from the first." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " As the patriarch went forth alone at eventide, the rever- 
 ies of genius have been to Bryant holy and private seasons ; 
 they are as unstained by the passing clouds of this troubled 
 existence, as the skies of his own ' prairies ' by village smoke. 
 He has preserved the elevation which he so early ac- 
 quired. He has been loyal to the Muses. At their shrine his 
 ministry seems ever free and sacred, wholly apart from the 
 ordinary associations of life. With a pure heart and a lofty 
 purpose, has he -hymned the glory of nature and the praise of 
 Freedom. To this we cannot but in a great degree ascribe 
 the serene beauty of his verse. . . . Like all human be- 
 ings, the burden of daily toil sometimes weighs heavily on his 
 soul : the noisy activity of common life becomes hopeless : 
 
BRYANT 551 
 
 scenes of inhumanity, error, and suffering grow oppressive, 
 or more personal causes of despondency make the grasshopper 
 a burden. Then he turns to the quietude and beauty of nat- 
 ure for refreshment. . , . The elevated manner in which 
 Bryant has uniformly presented the claims of poetry, the tran- 
 quil eloquence with which his chaste and serious muse appeals 
 to the heart, deserve the most grateful recognition. . . . 
 A beautiful calm, like that which rests on the noble works of 
 the sculptor, breathes from the heart of Bryant. He traces a 
 natural phenomenon or, in melodious numbers, the history of 
 some familiar scene, and then, with almost prophetic empha- 
 sis, utters to the charmed ear a high lesson or a sublime truth." 
 H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Bryant has never been a popular poet, in the ordinary 
 acceptation of the word ; neither is Wordsworth, to whom he 
 has the nearest intellectual kinship. But he has ever been 
 conspicuous, elevated beyond all temporary popularities." 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " Bryant is one for whom the grosser world had no allure- 
 ments ; endowed with kind and gentle virtues, modest, un- 
 assuming, mild, simple, elevated in sentiment, dignified in 
 deportment, pure in life, a worshipper of the beautiful every- 
 where in nature and art, perpetually attended by noble and 
 benevolent aspirations, familiar as a friend with the best 
 spirits of the past, but shrinking instinctively from contact 
 with society. " Parke Godwin. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But wouldst thou rest 
 Awhile from tumult and the frauds of men, 
 These old and friendly solitudes invite 
 Thy visit. They, while yet the forest trees 
 Were young upon the unviolated earth, 
 And yet the moss-stains on the rock were new, 
 Beheld thy [Freedom's] glorious childhood, and rejoiced." 
 
 The. Antiquity of Freedom. 
 
552 BRYANT 
 
 " Ah ! 'twere a lot too blest 
 
 Forever in thy colored shades to stray : 
 Amid the kisses of the soft southwest 
 To move and dream for aye ; 
 
 " And leave the vain low strife 
 
 That makes men mad the tug for wealth and power 
 The passions and the cares that wither life, 
 And waste its little hour." Autumn Woods. 
 
 " Though forced to drudge for the dregs of men 
 And scrawl strange words with the barbarous pen 
 And mingle among the jostling crowd, 
 Where the sons of strife are subtle and loud 
 I often come to this quiet place, 
 To breathe the airs that ruffle thy face, 
 And gaze upon thee in silent dream ; 
 For in thy lonely and lovely stream 
 An image of that calm life appears 
 That won my heart in my greener years." 
 
 Green River. 
 
 2. Genuineness Sincerity Naturalness. " He 
 
 is so genuine that he testifies to nothing in scenery or human 
 life of which he has not had a direct personal consciousness. 
 His sincerity is the severity of character and not merely the 
 sincerity of a swift imagination, which believes while it is 
 creating. He does not appear to have the capacity to assume 
 various points of view, to project himself into forms of being 
 different from his own, to follow any inspiration other than 
 that which springs up in his own individual heart. . . . 
 His thoughts, emotions, language, are all his own. He has 
 earned the right to them by the contact of his mind with the 
 object to which they relate. The power to heal, to glad- 
 den, to inspire to sublime effort, to lift the mind above all 
 anxious cares and petty ambitions, he has tested by conscious- 
 ness." . P. Whipple. 
 
 " He is not indebted to the patient study of books so much 
 
BRYANT 553 
 
 as to calm communion with outer things. He has levied no 
 contributions on the masters of foreign literature, nor depended 
 upon the locked-up treasures of ancient genius for the materials 
 of thought and expression. He has written from the movings 
 of his own mind ; he has uttered what he has felt and known; 
 he has described things around him in fitting terms, terms 
 suggested by familiar contemplation, and thus his writings 
 have become transcripts of external nature. Mr. Bryant's 
 one demand is for a spirit of greater independence, for less 
 imitation of form, for a more hearty reliance upon native 
 instinct and inspiration : in a word, for greater freedom, 
 greater simplicity, and greater truth." Parke Godwin. 
 
 11 He is original because he is sincere a true painter of the 
 face of this country and of the sentiment of his own people." 
 Emerson. 
 
 " I particularly enjoy Bryant's poetry because I can under- 
 stand it. It is probably a sign that I am somewhat behind 
 the age, that I have but little relish for elaborate obscurity in 
 literature of which you find it difficult to study out the mean- 
 ing and are not sure you have hit upon it at last. The truly 
 beautiful and sublime is always simple and natural and 
 marked by a certain unconsciousness of effort. This is Mr. 
 Bryant's poetry." Edward Everett. 
 
 " Does any memory, however searching or censorious, recall 
 one line that he wrote which was not honest and pure, one 
 measure that he defended except from the profoundest convic- 
 tion of its usefulness to the country, one cause that he advo- 
 cated which any friend of liberty, of humanity, or of good 
 government would deplore ?" George William Curtis. 
 
 " He is not only a poet but a poet whose utterances have 
 been singularly free from the varying fashions of his day. 
 He is wholly without mannerism. His art never aims at being 
 effectual and thus never betrays itself. Simplicity, nobility, 
 and a plainness which rivals prose without being itself prosaic, 
 are the characteristics of Mr. Bryant's style. He is an illus- 
 
554 BRYANT 
 
 trious example of the youth of that highest poetic art, which 
 does not spring from youthful ferment of the blood, or the 
 motions of a keen enthusiastic sentiment which is dulled by 
 time, but which is woven into the whole moral and intel- 
 lectual being of the poet is born with him and cannot be 
 lost while he lives." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " Bryant thought that verses that were obscure were not 
 poetry. His constitutional aversion to sham of all kinds no 
 doubt had its share in begetting this aversion. He would as 
 soon have invoked the aid of a brass band to secure his audi- 
 ence as to lend himself to any meretricious devices for extort- 
 ing admiration. Such he regarded all surprising novelties of 
 expression and all subtleties of thought which the common 
 apprehension does not readily accept. He felt that no poem 
 was fit to leave his hand if a word or a line in it betrayed 
 affectation or required study to be understood." John 
 Bigelow. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " On the breast of earth 
 I lie and listen to her mighty voice 
 A voice of many tones sent up from streams 
 That wander through the gloom from woods unseen, 
 Swayed by the sweeping of the tides of air ; 
 From rocky chasms where darkness dwells all day, 
 And hollows of the great invisible hills, 
 And sands that edge the ocean, stretching far 
 Into the night a melancholy sound." Earth. 
 
 " Oft, in the sunless April day, 
 
 Thy early smile has stayed my walk ; 
 But midst the gorgeous blooms of May, 
 I passed thee on thy humble stalk. 
 
 " So they who climb to wealth forget 
 
 The friends in darker fortunes tried. 
 I copied them but I regret 
 
 That I should ape the ways of pride. 
 
BRYANT 555 
 
 " And when again the genial hour 
 
 Awakes the painted tribes of light, 
 I'll not o'erlook the modest flower 
 
 That makes the woods of April bright." 
 
 The Yellow Violet. 
 
 " I stand upon their ashes in thy beam, 
 
 The offspring of another race, I stand 
 Beside a stream they loved, this valley-stream ; 
 
 And where the night-fire of the quivered band 
 Showed the gray oak by fits, and war-song rung, 
 I teach the quiet shades the strains of this new tongue." 
 
 A Walk at Sunset. 
 
 3. Sensibility to Nature. " Bryant is not merely a 
 worshipper at her shrine [Nature's] but a priest of her myster- 
 ies and an interpreter of her symbolical language to men. 
 And it is not merely the external forms but the internal spirit 
 with which he has communed. He sees and hears with his 
 soul as well as with his eye and ear. Nature to him is alive, 
 and her life has coursed through the finest veins and passed 
 into the inmost recesses of his moral being. He is, perhaps, 
 unequalled among our American poets in his grasp of the ele- 
 mental life of Nature. His descriptions of natural scenery 
 imply that nature, in every aspect it turns to the poetic eye, is 
 thoroughly alive. It is this which compels us to mingle ven- 
 eration and wonder with admiration and delight in reading 
 his works ; it is this which gives his poems their character of 
 depth." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " They transport us into the depths of the solemn primeval 
 forest, to the shores of the lonely lake, the banks of the wild, 
 nameless stream, or the brow of the rocky upland, rising like 
 a promontory from amidst a wild ocean of foliage ; while 
 they shed around us the glory of a climate fierce in its ex- 
 tremes. . . . Bryant, dear Nature's nursling and the 
 priest whom she most loves, is like the bards of old ; his spirit 
 delights in fire, air, earth, and water the apparent structures 
 
556 BRYANT 
 
 of the starry heavens, the mountain recesses, and the vasty 
 deep." Washington Irving. 
 
 11 As to sensibility, no man ever lived more delicately sus- 
 ceptible to external influences. Not only is his eye open to 
 the forms of nature, but every fibre of his being seems to be 
 trembling alive to them : like the strings of an ^olian harp, 
 which the faintest breath of the wind can awaken. Words- 
 worth has been called the apostle of nature ; Bryant said 
 to his friend Dana, on first reading Wordsworth's ' Lyrical 
 Ballads : ' 'A thousand springs seemed to gush up at once 
 into my heart, and the face of Nature changed of a sudden 
 into a strange freshness and life.' Nature, indeed, was win- 
 ning him completely to herself, and one of the first-fruits of 
 her caresses was the 'Yellow Violet.' 'A Fragment,' now 
 known as ' An Inscription for the Entrance to a Wood,' is 
 due to the same feeling. Composed in a noble old forest that 
 fronted his father's dwelling, it is an exquisite picture of the 
 calm contentment he found in the woods. Every object : 
 the green leaves, the thick roof, the mossy rocks, the cleft-born 
 wind-flowers, the dancing insects, the squirrel with raised paws, 
 the ponderous trunks, black roots, and sunken brooks is 
 painted with the minutest fidelity and yet with an almost im- 
 passioned sympathy. . . . His principal theme is Nature, 
 which he treats as one whose mission it was to show an uncon- 
 genial world what beauty lay concealed in our vast, uncouth, 
 almost savage wilds of woods and fields." Parke Godwin. 
 " Thank God ! his hand on nature's keys, 
 
 Its cunning keeps at life's full span." Whittier. 
 
 " What Nature said to him was plainly spoken and clearly 
 heard and perfectly repeated. Let him more and more give 
 human voice to woods and waters, and in acting as the accepted 
 interpreter of Nature, let him speak fearlessly to the heart as 
 to the eye. The primeval woods, God's first temples, breathe 
 the solemn benediction of his verse." George William 
 Curtis. 
 
BRYANT 557 
 
 " Then came a woman in the night, 
 
 When winds were whist, and moonlight smiled, 
 Where in his mother's arms, who slept, 
 There lay a new-born child. 
 
 " She gazed at him with loving looks, 
 And while her hand upon his head 
 She laid in blessing and in power, 
 In slow, deep words she said : 
 
 " ' This child is mine. Of all my sons 
 Are none like what the lad shall be, 
 Though these are wise, and those are strong, 
 And all are dear to me. 
 
 " ' The elder sisters of my race 
 
 Shall taunt no more that I am dumb ; 
 Hereafter I shall sing through him, 
 In ages yet to come ! ' 
 
 " She stooped and kissed his baby mouth, 
 Whence came a breath of melody, 
 As from the closed leaves of a rose 
 The murmur of a bee ! 
 
 " Thus did she consecrate the child, 
 His more than mother from that hour, 
 Albeit at first he knew her not, 
 Nor guessed his sleeping power. ' ' 
 
 R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 "I shall never forget with what feeling my friend Bryant, 
 some years ago, described to me the effect produced upon him 
 by his meeting for the first time Wordsworth's Ballads. . . . 
 He had felt the sympathetic truth from an according mind, and 
 you see how instantly his powers and affections shot over the 
 earth and through his kind." Richard H. Dana. 
 
 " Mr. Bryant is best known to us as the poet who has 
 sought his inspiration from American forests. Save Emerson, 
 
558 BRYANT 
 
 no American poet so often and so well described the Nature 
 familiar to the residents of the Eastern States the Nature 
 which has been the background of most of our literature. 
 Bryant might have said with Addison, * Poetic fields encom- 
 pass me around.' Nay, more, he interprets the meaning of 
 Nature as the mirror and teacher of the soul. His observa- 
 tions of skies, woods, and waters, and his power of description 
 of the outer world, justly entitle him to his wide renown as a 
 poet of nature." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " All the green herbs 
 
 Are stirring in his breath; a thousand flowers, 
 By the road-side and the borders of the brook, 
 Nod gayly to each other ; glossy leaves 
 Are twinkling in the sun, as if the dew 
 Were on them yet, and silver waters break 
 Into small waves and sparkle as he comes." 
 
 The Summer Wind. 
 
 " * There in the boughs that hide the roof the mock-bird sits and 
 
 sings, 
 And there the hang-bird's brood within its little hammock 
 
 swings ; 
 A pebbly brook, where rustling winds among the hopples 
 
 sweep, 
 
 Shall lull thee till the morning sun looks in upon thy sleep.'" 
 
 The Strange Lady. 
 
 " The rain-drops glistened on the trees around, 
 Whose shadows on the tall grass were not stirred, 
 Save when a shower of diamonds, to the ground 
 Was shaken by the flight of startled bird ; 
 For birds were warbling round, and bees were heard 
 About the flowers ; the cheerful rivulet sung 
 And gossiped, as he hastened ocean-ward ; 
 To the gray oak the squirrel, chiding, clung, 
 And chirping from the ground the grasshopper upsprung." 
 
 After a Tempest. 
 
BRYANT 559 
 
 4. Majesty Sublimity. " In his movement Bryant is 
 the most Miltonic of American poets. No writer since the 
 Elizabethan era has given to the world more rolling and 
 majestic periods than has the author of ' Thanatopsis. ' 
 
 " Vast as are the themes, giving scope for the boldest and 
 broadest flights and exciting the highest sense of sublimity, 
 they are treated with a corresponding grandeur of language 
 and thought. Certainly it ["Thanatopsis "] is marked by a 
 grandeur and profundity of thought, a breadth of treatment 
 and an imagination, that surprises us in one of his age only 
 seventeen . ' ' Parke Godwin. 
 
 " The grandeur of ' Thanatopsis ' may be limited and im- 
 perfect, but it is still grandeur." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 "The perfection of its [" Thanatopsis's "] rhythm, the 
 majesty and dignity of the tone of matured reflection which 
 breathes through it, the solemnity of its underlying sentiment, 
 and the austere unity of the pervading thought, would deceive 
 almost any critic into affirming it to be the product of an 
 imaginative thinker to whom years had brought the philo- 
 sophic mind." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "We have always considered his ' Antiquity of Freedom' 
 and ' Hymn to Death ' as stronger and loftier strains than 
 ' Thanatopsis,' the charm of which lies chiefly in its grave, 
 majestic music." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " The reverential awe of the irresistible pervades the verses 
 entitled 'Thanatopsis' and 'A Forest Hymn,' imparting to 
 them a sweet solemnity, which must affect all thinking hearts." 
 James Grant Wilson. 
 
 "A noble simplicity of language, combined with these 
 traits, often leads to the most genuine sublimity of expression. 
 Some of his lines are unsurpassed in this respect. They so 
 quietly unfold a great thought or a magnificent image that we 
 are often taken by surprise." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
560 BRYANT 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Oh, God! when thou 
 
 Dost scare the world with tempests, set on fire 
 
 The heavens with falling thunderbolts, or fill, 
 
 With all the waters of the firmament 
 
 The swift dark whirl-wind that uproots the woods 
 
 And drowns the villages ; when, at thy call, 
 
 Uprises the great deep and throws himself 
 
 Upon the continent, and overwhelms 
 
 Its cities who forgets not, at sight 
 
 Of these tremendous tokens of thy power, 
 
 His pride, and lays his strifes and follies by ? " 
 
 A Forest Hymn. 
 
 " And lo ! on the wing of the heavy gales, 
 Through the boundless arch of heaven he sails ; 
 Silent and slow and terribly strong, 
 The mighty shadow is borne along, 
 
 " Like the dark eternity to come ; 
 
 While the world below, dismaved and dumb, 
 Through the calm of the thick hot atmosphere 
 Looks up at its gloomy folds with fear." 
 
 The Hurricane. 
 " The hills 
 
 Rocked-ribbed and ancient as the sun, the vales 
 Stretching in pensive quietness between ; 
 The venerable woods rivers that move 
 In majesty, and the complaining brooks 
 That make the meadows green ; and, poured round all, 
 Old Ocean's gray and melancholy waste, 
 Are but the solemn decorations all 
 Of the great tomb of man." Thanatopsis. 
 
 5. Fulness Suggestiveness. "Another character- 
 istic of Bryant's poetical diction is its fulness of matter. 
 Every line is load ec with meaning. This weight and wealth 
 and compactness of thought sometimes fail to impress the 
 
BRYANT 56l 
 
 reader in his blank verse, on account of its swift and slipping 
 freedom of movement ; but in his singing rhyme they are 
 forced upon the attention." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Enough is suggested to convey a strong impression, and 
 often by the introduction of a single circumstance the mind 
 is instantly able to complete the picture. Some elevating 
 inference or truth is elicited from every scene consecrated by 
 his muse." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " Certain of Bryant's pieces it is impossible to read with- 
 out gliding unconsciously into a thousand trains of associated 
 thought; a single epithet sometimes tells many a secret." 
 Parke Godwin. 
 
 " His close observation of the phenomena of nature and 
 the graphic felicity of his details prevent his descriptions 
 from ever becoming general and commonplace." Washing- 
 ton Irving. 
 
 "The gravity, the dignity, the solemnity of natural devo- 
 tion, were never before stated so accurately and with such 
 significance. We stand in thought in the heart of a great 
 forest, under its broad roof of boughs, awed by the sacred 
 influences of the place. A gloom which is not painful settles 
 upon us ; we are surrounded by mystery and unseen energy. 
 The shadows are full of worshippers and beautiful things that 
 live in their misty twilights." R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Then strayed the poet, in his dreams, 
 
 By Rome's and Egypt's ancient graves ; 
 Went up the New World's forest streams, 
 Stood in the Hindoo's temple-caves ; 
 
 " Walked with the Pawnee, fierce and stark, 
 
 The sallow Tartar, midst his herds, 
 The peering Chinese, and the dark 
 False Malay uttering gentle words." 
 
 The Death of Schiller. 
 36 
 
562 BRYANT 
 
 " Ah me! what armed nations Asian horde 
 
 And Lybian host the Scythian and the Gaul 
 Have swept your base and through your passes poured, 
 
 Like ocean-tides uprising at the call 
 Of tyrant winds against your rocky side 
 The bloody billows dashed, and howled, and died ! " 
 
 To the Apennines. 
 
 " Then the earth shouts with gladness, and her tribes 
 Gather within their ancient bounds again. 
 Else had the mighty of the olden time, 
 Nimrod, Sesostris, or the youth who feigned 
 His birth from Lybian Ammon, smitten yet 
 The nations with a rod of iron, and driven 
 Their chariot o'er our necks." Hymn to Death. 
 
 6. Precision Correctness. "In language, indeed, 
 he is so great an artist that no general term can do justice to 
 his felicity. The very atmosphere of his sentiment, the sub- 
 tlest tones of his thought, the most refined modifications 
 which feeling and reflection receive from individuality, are all 
 transfused into his style with unobtrusive ease. . . . 
 No melody of tone is ever introduced merely for the music ; 
 no flush of the hues of language is ever used merely to give 
 the expression a bright coloring, but all is characteristic, in- 
 dicating the subordination of the materials to the man, the 
 poetry to the poet. It is for this reason that Bryant is so 
 valuable a guide to young lyrists, who are so prone to be car- 
 ried away by words, and who emerge from their tangled 
 wilderness of verbal sweets and beauties without any essential 
 sweetness and beauty of sentiment and imagination, and be- 
 come, at best, authors of poetical lines and images rather 
 than poems. To this singular purity and depth of sentiment 
 he adds a corresponding simplicity, closeness, clearness, and 
 beauty of expression. His style is literally himself. It has 
 the form and follows the movement of his nature, and is 
 shaped into the exact expression of the word, sentiment, and 
 thought out of which the poem springs." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 
BRYANT 563 
 
 "Now, when expression has been carried to the extreme, 
 it is an occasional relief to recur to the clearness, to the exact 
 appreciation of words, discoverable in every portion of Bry- 
 ant's verse and prose. It is like a return from a florid renais- 
 sance to the antique ; and indeed there was something Doric 
 in Bryant's nature. His diction, like his thought, often 
 refreshes us as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. 
 Give his poems a study, and their simplicity is a 
 charm. . . . Verse, to Bryant, was the outflow of his 
 deepest emotions ; a severe taste and a discreet temperament 
 made him avoid the study of decoration." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "His art was exquisite. It was absolutely unsuspected ; 
 but it served its truest purpose, for it removed every obstruc- 
 tion to the full and complete delivery of his message." 
 George William Curtis. 
 
 " It seems as if his whole study had been how his thoughts 
 might be most beautifully uttered. Not only are words not 
 misused, which would be small praise indeed, but none occur 
 that any process of refinement can improve." Parke Godwin. 
 
 "He sees us [the flowers, etc.] where other eyes would see 
 nothing, or at most the scenery of our great theatre the 
 earth. One cannot read Mr. Bryant's poetry without wonder 
 and admiration wonder at the closeness of his observation 
 and admiration of what he accomplishes by it." R. H. 
 Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Nor I alone ; a thousand bosoms round 
 Inhale thee in the fulness of delight ; 
 And languid forms rise up, and pulses bound 
 Livelier, at coming of the wind of night; 
 And, languishing to hear thy grateful sound, 
 Lies the vast inland stretched beyond the sight. 
 Go forth into the gathering shade ; go forth, 
 God's blessing breathed upon the fainting earth ! " 
 
 To the Evening Wind, 
 
564 BRYANT 
 
 " Yet loveliest are thy setting smiles, and fair, 
 
 Fairest of all that earth beholds, the hues 
 That live among the clouds, and flush the air, 
 
 Lingering and deepening at the hour of dews. 
 Then softest gales are breathed, and softest heard 
 The plaining voice of streams and pensive note of bird. 
 
 They deemed their quivered warrior, when he died 
 Went to the bright isles beneath the setting sun ; 
 Where winds are aye at peace and skies are fair, 
 And purple-skirted clouds curtain the crimson air." 
 
 A Walk at Sunset. 
 
 7. Tenderness Pensive Melancholy. In Bryant's 
 poems a gentleness as soft as that of a woman, a tenderness 
 mild and tearful as early love, simplicity like that of uncon- 
 scious youth, are joined to the lofty philosophy of a sage. 
 Innumerable are the passages that touch our best feelings, 
 sinking quietly into the heart and melting it, like a strain of 
 music, into liquid joy and love." Parke Godwin. 
 
 " He has the gift of shedding over them [his descriptions] 
 a pensive grace that blends them all into harmony and of 
 clothing them with moral associations that make them speak 
 to the heart." Washington Irving. 
 
 " The chief charm of Bryant's poetry consists in a tender 
 pensiveness, a moral melancholy, breathing over all his con- 
 templations, dreams, and reveries, even such as are in the main 
 glad, and giving assurance of a pure spirit, benevolent to all 
 living creatures, and habitually pious in the felt omnipresence 
 of the Creator. It overflows with what Wordsworth calls the 
 religion of the Gods. The reverential awe of the irresistible 
 pervades the verses entitled ' Thanatopsis ' and ' A Forest 
 Hymn,' imparting to them a sweet solemnity which must affect 
 all thinking hearts." Professor Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
 " I linger upon it [" Thanatopsis "] because it was the first 
 adequate voice of the New England spirit ; and in the gran- 
 deur of the hills, in the heroic Puritan tradition of sacrifice 
 
BRYANT 565 
 
 and endurance in the daily life, saddened by imperious and 
 awful theologic dogma, in the hard circumstance of the pio- 
 neer household, the contest with the wilderness, the grim le- 
 gends of Indians and the war, have we not some natural clue 
 to the strain of ' Thanatopsis,' the depthless and entrancing 
 sadness, as of inexorable fate, that murmurs, like the autumn 
 wind through the forest, in the melancholy cadences of the 
 ' Hymn to Death? ' " George William Curtis. 
 
 " Wayward beauty or tender suggestiveness is not absent, 
 but each is subordinated to the solemn reflections inspired by 
 the scenes in which we live." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " The still, sad music of humanity was ever sounding in 
 his ears, moaning like the wind of the forest. . . . This 
 large, far-reaching sympathy with his fellow-creatures is a 
 marked characteristic of Bryant's poetry, and distinguishes it 
 from that of every other American poet, living or dead." 
 R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Let me move slowly through the street, 
 
 Filled with an ever-shifting train, 
 Amid the sound of steps that beat 
 
 The murmuring walks like autumn rain. 
 
 " How fast the flitting figures come ! 
 
 The mild, the fierce, the stony face ; 
 Some bright with thoughtless smiles, and some 
 Where secret tears have left their trace. 
 
 " They pass to toil, to strife, to rest ; 
 
 To halls in which the feast is spread ; 
 To chambers where the funeral guest 
 In silence sits beside the dead." 
 
 The Crowded Street. 
 
 " Thou changest not but I am changed 
 Since first thy pleasant banks I ranged ; 
 And the grave stranger, come to see 
 The play-place of his infancy, 
 
566 BRYANT 
 
 Has scarce a single trace of him 
 
 Who sported once upon thy brim. 
 
 The visions of my youth are past 
 
 Too bright, too beautiful to last." The Rivulet. 
 
 " Yet there are pangs of keener woe, 
 
 Of which the sufferers never speak, 
 Nor to the world's cold pity show 
 The tears that scald the cheek, 
 Wrung from their eyelids by the shame 
 And guilt of those they shrink to name, 
 Whom once they loved with cheerful will, 
 And love, though fallen and branded, still." 
 
 The Living Lost. 
 
 8. Nationality Patriotism. " His poems are strictly 
 American. They are American in their subjects, imagery, 
 and spirit. Scarcely any other than one born in this country 
 can appreciate all their merit, so strongly marked are they by 
 the peculiarities of our natural scenery, our social feelings, 
 and our natural convictions. . . . Nor is the tone of 
 these poems less American than the imagery of the themes. 
 They breathe the spirit of that new order of things in which 
 we are cast. They are fresh like a young people unwarped 
 by the superstitions and prejudices of the age ; free like a 
 nation scorning the thought of bondage ; generous like a so- 
 ciety whose only protection is mutual sympathy ; and bold 
 and vigorous, like a land pressing onward to a future of glori- 
 ous enlargement. The noble instincts of democracy prompt 
 and animate every strain. An attachment to liberty stronger 
 than the desire for life, an immovable regard for human rights, 
 a confidence in humanity that admits of no misgivings, and a 
 rejoicing hope of the future, full of illumination and peace, 
 these are the sentiments that they everywhere inspire."- 
 Parke Godwin. 
 
 "Bryant, for half a century, with conscience and knowl- 
 edge, with power and unquailing courage, did his part in 
 
BRYANT 567 
 
 holding the hand and heart of his country true to her now 
 glorious ideal. . . . The last stanza of this poem [" The 
 Ages"] breathes in majestic music that pure passion for 
 America and that strong and sublime faith in her destiny, 
 which constantly appears in his verse and never wavered in 
 his heart." George William Curtis. 
 
 " Bryant's poems are valuable not only for their intrinsic 
 excellence but for the vast influence their wide circulation is 
 calculated to exercise on national feelings and manners." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " The feeling with which he looks upon the wonders of 
 creation is remarkably appropriate to the scenery of the New 
 World. His poems convey, to an extraordinary degree, the 
 actual impression which is awakened by our lakes, mountains, 
 and forests. . . . We esteem it one of Bryant's great 
 merits that he has not only faithfully pictured the beauties 
 but caught the very spirit of our scenery. His best poems 
 have an an them -like cadence, which accords with the vast 
 scenes they celebrate. . . . No English park, formalized 
 by the hand of Art, no legendary spot like the pine grove of 
 Ravenna, surrounds us. It is not the gloomy German forest, 
 with its phantoms and banditti, but one of those primeval 
 dense woodlands of America. . . . Any reader of Bryant 
 on the other side of the ocean, gifted with a small degree of 
 sensibility and imagination, may derive from his poems the 
 very awe and delight with which the first view of one of 
 our majestic forests would strike the mind." H. T. Tucker- 
 man. 
 
 "The British public has already expressed its delight at 
 the graphic descriptions of American scenery and wild wood- 
 land characters contained in the works of our national novel- 
 ist Cooper. The same keen eye and just feeling for nature, 
 the same indigenous style of thinking and local peculiarity of 
 imagery, which give such novelty and interest to the pages of 
 that gifted writer, will be found to characterize this volume 
 
568 BRYANT 
 
 [Bryant's poems] condensed into a narrow compass and sub- 
 limated into poetry." Washington Irving. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " There's freedom at thy gates and rest 
 For Earth's down-trodden and opprest ; 
 A shelter for the hunted head, 
 For the starved laborer toil and bread. 
 Power, at thy bounds, 
 Stops and calls back his baffled hounds." 
 
 Oh Mother of a Mighty Race. 
 
 " But thou, my country, thou shalt never fall, 
 Save with thy children thy maternal care, 
 
 Thy lavish love, thy blessings showered on all 
 These are thy fetters seas and stormy air 
 
 Are the wide barrier of thy borders, where, 
 Among thy gallant sons who guard thee well, 
 
 Thou laugh'st at enemies : who shall then declare 
 The date of thy deep-founded strength, or tell 
 How happy, in thy lap, the sons of men shall dwell ? " 
 
 The Ages. 
 
 " These are the gardens of the desert, these 
 The unshorn fields, boundless and beautiful, 
 For which the speech of England has no name 
 The Prairies. I behold them for the first, 
 And my heart swells, while the dilated sight 
 Takes in the encircling vastness." The Prairies. 
 
 9. Melody Harmony. " The cadences in ' The Ages ' 
 cannot be surpassed. There are comparatively few conso- 
 nants. Liquids and the softer vowels abound, and the partial 
 line after the pause at ' surge, 1 with the stately march of the 
 succeeding Alexandrine, is one of the finest conceivable 
 finales." Edgar Allan Poe. 
 
BRYANT 569 
 
 " How can we praise the verse whose music flows 
 With solemn cadence and majestic close, 
 Pure as the dew that filters through the rose." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " The very rhythm of the stanzas 'To a Waterfowl ' gives 
 the impression of its flight. Like the bird's sweeping wing, 
 they float with a calm and majestic cadence to the ear." 
 H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " There is an occasional quaint grace of expression, as in 
 
 ' Nurse of full streams and lifter up of proud 
 Sky-mingling mountains that o'erlook the cloud,' 
 
 or an antithetical and rhythmical force combined, as in 
 
 ' The shock that hurled 
 To dust, in many fragments, 
 The throne whose roots were in another world 
 And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own.' " 
 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Woo her when, with rosy blush, 
 
 Summer eve is sinking ; 
 When, on rills that softly gush, 
 
 Stars are softly winking ; 
 When through bows that knit the bower 
 
 Moonlight gleams are stealing ; 
 Woo her till the gentler hour 
 
 Wake a gentler feeling." Song. 
 
 " Where olive leaves were twinkling in every wind that blew, 
 There sat beneath the pleasant shade a damsel of Peru. 
 Betwixt the slender boughs, as they opened to the air, 
 Came glimpses of her ivory neck and of her glossy hair." 
 
 The Damsel of Peru. 
 
 " When breezes are soft and skies are fair, 
 I steal an hour from study and care, 
 And hie me away to the woodland scene, 
 Where wanders the stream with waters of green, 
 
57 BRYANT 
 
 As if the bright fringe of herbs on its brink, 
 Had given their stain to the wave they drink ; 
 And they whose meadows it murmurs through 
 Have named the stream from its own fair hue." 
 
 Green River. 
 
 10. Calm Trust in Providence. "The great princi- 
 ple of Bryant's faith is that ' Eternal love doth keep in his 
 complacent arms the earth, the air, the deep.' To set forth 
 in strains the most attractive and lofty this glorious sentiment 
 is the constant aim of his poetry." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " He says in a letter that he felt as he walked up the hills 
 very forlorn and desolate indeed, not knowing what was going 
 to become of him in the big world, which grew bigger as he 
 ascended and darker with the coming on of night. The sun 
 had already set, leaving behind it one of those brilliant seas 
 of chrysolite and opal which often flood the New England 
 skies ; and while he was looking upon the rosy splendor with 
 rapt admiration, a solitary bird made its way along the illumi- 
 nated horizon. He watched the lone wanderer until it was 
 lost in the distance, asking himself whither it had come and 
 to what far home it was flying. When he went to the house 
 where he was to stop for the night, his mind was still full of 
 what he had seen and felt, and he wrote those lines, as imper- 
 ishable as our own language, ' The Waterfowl.' The solemn 
 tone in which they conclude, and which by some critics has 
 been thought too moralizing, was as much a part of the scene 
 as the flight of the bird itself, which spoke not alone to his 
 eye but to his soul. To have omitted that grand expression 
 of faith and hope in a divine guidance would have been to 
 violate the entire truth of the vision." Parke Godwin. 
 
 " This philosophy of life is a serious one ; but it admits of 
 consolation and cheerfulness. It is dreary in Byron; it is 
 awful in Ecclesiastes ; but it is neither in Bryant." R. H. 
 Stoddard. 
 
 "There is no repining, no attempt to shield his self-love 
 
BRYANT 57J 
 
 by holding Providence responsible for his hardships ; still less 
 do we find there any signs of surrender or of despair, but the 
 same pious trust in the Divine guidance which a dozen years 
 before had sustained him in another crisis in his career and 
 which found such lofty expressions in the lines * To a Water- 
 fowl.' His inspiration was always from above. In the flower, 
 in the stream, in the tempest, in the rainbow, in the snow, in 
 everything about him, nature was always telling him some- 
 thing new of the goodness of God and forming excuses for 
 the frail and erring." -John Bigelow. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " He who, from zone to zone, 
 
 Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
 In the long way that I must tread alone 
 
 Will lead my steps aright." To a Waterfowl. 
 
 " Oh, no ! a thousand cheerful omens give 
 Hope of yet happier days, whose dawn is nigh. 
 He who has trained the elements shall not live 
 The slave of his own passions ; he whose eye 
 Unwinds the eternal dances of the sky, 
 And in the abyss of brightness dares to span 
 The sun's broad circle, rising yet more high, 
 In God's magnificent works his will shall scan 
 And love and peace shall make their paradise with man." 
 
 The Ages. 
 
 " And when the hour of rest 
 Comes, like a calm upon the mid-sea brine, 
 
 Hushing its billowy breast 
 The quiet of that moment too is thine ; 
 
 It breathes of Him who keeps 
 The vast and helpless city while it sleeps." 
 
 Hymn of the City. 
 
 II. Profound Meditation. "The chief of our poets 
 of meditation, based upon observation, are Bryant and Emer- 
 son." C. F. Richardson. 
 
5/2 BRYANT 
 
 "With his inimitable pictures there is ever blended high 
 speculation or a reflective strain of moral comment." H. T. 
 Tucker man. 
 
 " No boy, no young man, has ever understood his [Words- 
 worth's] serene and lofty genius. He touches, he moves no 
 man, until years have brought the philosophic mind. It 
 comes to some early, to some late, to some not at all. It 
 came to Bryant early, and it never left him. ' Thanatopsis ' 
 struck the keynote of his genius, disclosed to him the growth 
 and grandeur of his powers, and placed him for what he was, 
 before all American poets, past, present, and to come." R. 
 H. Stoddard. 
 
 " But they [his juvenile efforts] do not as poetry bear wit- 
 ness to the real bent of his genius, or even foreshadow the 
 characteristics of his later writings that minute and loving 
 observation of nature which became with him almost a 
 religion or that profound meditative interpretation of the 
 great movements of the universe which amounted to a kind 
 of philosophy. ' ' Parke Godwin. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Be it ours to meditate, 
 In these calm shades, thy milder majesty, 
 And to the beautiful order of thy works 
 Learn to confirm the order of our lives." 
 
 A Forest Hymn. 
 
 " Stainless worth, 
 
 Such as the sternest age of virtue saw, 
 Ripens, meanwhile, till time shall call it forth 
 From the low modest shade, to light and bless the earth." 
 
 The Ages. 
 " I would make 
 
 Reason my guide, but she should sometimes sit 
 Patiently by the way-side, while I traced 
 The mazes of the pleasant wilderness 
 Around me. She should be my counsellor, 
 
BRYANT 573 
 
 But not my tyrant. For the spirit needs 
 Impulses from a deeper source than hers ; 
 And there are motions in the mind of man 
 Thaj^she must look upon with awe." 
 
 The Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus. 
 
 Fondness for Apostrophe. As a direct corollary 
 or sequence of Bryant's elevation and high philosophy, we 
 find him continually indulging in apostrophe. In less dignified 
 hands, so frequent a use of this figure would become a blemish ; 
 but it seems entirely in accord with the spirit of the man and 
 of his poems. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But ye, who for the living lost 
 That agony in secret bear, 
 Who shall with soothing words accost 
 The strength of your despair ? " 
 
 The Living Lost. 
 
 " Thou dost mark them flushed with hope, 
 As on the threshold of their vast designs 
 Doubtful and loose they stand, and strik'st them down." 
 
 Hymn to Death. 
 
 " Thou'rt gone, the abyss of heaven 
 
 Hath swallowed up thy form ; yet on my heart 
 Deeply has sunk the lesson thou hast given, 
 And shall not soon depart." To a Waterfowl. 
 
LOWELL, 1819-1891 
 
 Biographical Outline. James Russell Lowell, born at 
 Cambridge, Mass., February 22, 1819 ; father a Congrega- 
 tional minister, and both parents of English descent ; in 
 1827 Lowell enters the school of William Wells, near " Elm- 
 wood," as Lowell's home was called; he enters Harvard 
 College as a Freshman in 1834, and forms there an intimate 
 friendship with George B. Loring; he is only a fair student, 
 but evinces an early love for literature, especially poetry ; he 
 becomes secretary of the " Hasty Pudding Club," whose 
 records were then kept in verse ; he is suspended for several 
 months during his Senior year for neglect of studies ; he passes 
 the interval studying under a tutor at Concord, where he 
 meets Emerson and Thoreau ; he writes the poem for Class 
 Day in 1838 (a satire on the Abolitionists and the Concord 
 Transcendentalists), but is not allowed to read it because of 
 his suspension, then in effect, but it is printed in pamphlet 
 form for the class ; Lowell passes his final examinations and 
 takes A.B. with his classmates in June, 1838. 
 
 At first he thinks seriously of entering the ministry and then 
 takes up the law ; by October, 1838, he is reading Black- 
 stone " with as good a grace and as few wry faces as I may ; " 
 he plans a dramatic poem on Cromwell, and regrets " being 
 compelled to say farewell to the muses ; " in 1839 he writes, 
 " I am schooling myself and shaping my theory of poetry ; " 
 during 1839 he writes verses (" pottery ") for the Boston Post 
 and for the Advertiser ; in December, 1839, he meets Miss 
 Maria White, who ''knows more poetry than anyone I am 
 acquainted with; " he receives LL.B. from the Harvard Law 
 School in the summer of 1840, and takes up the law moreseri- 
 
 574 
 
LOWELL 575 
 
 ously because of his father's heavy financial losses at that time 
 and because of his engagement to Miss White in the autumn 
 of 1840 ; during 1839-40 he contributes verses to the Knicker- 
 bocker Magazine and to the Southern Literary Messenger 
 under his own name and under the pseudonym of "Hugh 
 Percival ; " he publishes early in 1841 a collection of his 
 poems entitled " A Year's Life," which wins some recogni- 
 tion; he spends the winter of 1842-43 in New York, under- 
 going treatment by an oculist, and makes valuable acquaint- 
 ances, including Page, the artist, and Briggs, the " Henry 
 Franca" of the "Fable for Critics;" during 1841-42 he 
 begins his life-long effort to secure international copyright, 
 and contributes poetry to the Boston Miscellany, Graham' s 
 Magazine, and the Democratic Review, receiving from ten to 
 thirty dollars for each poem ; in June, 1843, he writes to Lor- 
 ing: " I am more and more assured every day that I shall yet 
 do something that will keep my name (and perhaps my body) 
 alive. My wings were never so strong as now. So hurrah 
 for a niche and a laurel ! " 
 
 He publishes his second volume of poems in December, 
 1843, and resolves to devote himself to literature rather than 
 law; during 1844 he publishes " Conversations on Some of 
 the Older Poets" (not since republished), and marries Maria 
 White, another poet, in December of that year; they spend 
 the winter in Philadelphia, where Lowell, doubtless influenced 
 by his wife's strong abolitionist sentiments, becomes a con- 
 tributor to the Freeman, an an ti -slavery paper ; he returns to 
 Cambridge in June, 1845 ; in 1846 becomes a regular con- 
 tributor to the Anti- Slavery Standard at a salary of $500 
 a year for a weekly contribution in prose or verse ; he con- 
 tinues this connection till the spring of 1850, contributing 
 many of the " Biglow Papers " and his poems on " Garrison," 
 "Freedom," " Eurydice," "The Parting of the Ways," 
 "Beaver Brook," and "The First Snowfall," the latter in 
 memory of his first child, Blanche, who died in March, 1847, 
 
57 6 LOWELL 
 
 aged fifteen months; during 1848 he collects and publishes 
 the first series of " Biglow Papers," publishes " A Fable for 
 Critics" (anonymously), and contributes " Sir Launfal " to 
 the North American Review ; the entire first edition of the 
 "Biglow Papers" is sold within a week after publication; 
 during the winter of 1849-50 he publishes a collective edition 
 of his poems, entertains Frederika Bremer, and loses his second 
 child, Rose, then three years old, concerning whom he writes 
 "After the Burial" (first published in 1869); he sails for 
 Italy in July, 1851, hoping thus to improve his wife's failing 
 health, and selling a part of his patrimony for the expenses of 
 the journey ; he severs his connection with the Anti-Slavery 
 Standard in April, 1850, saying : "It has never been a matter 
 of dollars and cents between us, for I might have earned much 
 more in other ways. . . . For every poem which has 
 been printed in the Standard I could have got four times the 
 money paid me by the committee [controlling the Stand- 
 ard] ; " he loses his only son, then in his second year, at Rome 
 in the spring of 1852, and returns to America in the following 
 autumn ; he writes little during his first foreign tour, saying, 
 "I have been observing;" he contributes, in September, 
 1853, his " Moosehead Journal" to Putnam 1 s Magazine, in 
 which are also published about that time several of Mrs. 
 Lowell's poems ; his wife dies in October, 1853, leaving him 
 one child, a daughter ; Lowell writes, " I understand now what 
 is meant by ' the waters have gone over me ; ' " he spends the 
 summer of 1854 at Beverly, Mass.; he prepares a series of lect- 
 ures on the English poets during the autumn, and delivers the 
 same at the Lowell Institute, in Boston, during the following 
 winter, thus winning his spurs as a critic. 
 
 In January, 1855, he is offered the chair of French and 
 Spanish Literature at Harvard ("at a salary that will make 
 me independent "), thus succeeding Ticknor and Longfenow ; 
 he contributes " Cambridge Twenty Years Ago " to Putnam's 
 Magazine in January, 1854, and " Pictures from Appledore " 
 
LOWELL 577 
 
 to the Crayon for December, 1854; he accepts the Harvard 
 chair on condition of being allowed a year in Europe for prep- 
 aration ; he lectures in Wisconsin and other' central Western 
 States early in the spring of 1855, " going home with $600 in 
 my pocket ; " he publishes " Invita Minerva ' ' in the Crayon for 
 May, 1855, and sails for Paris in June ; he meets Leigh Hunt 
 and Lowell's friend Story, the sculptor, in London, where 
 Thackeray gives a dinner in Lowell's honor at the Garrick 
 Club ; to Germany early in the autumn of 1855, stopping at 
 Bruges, Antwerp, and the Hague, and settling at Dresden to 
 study the German language and literature ; he remains at Dres- 
 den, " working like a dog no, a pig," passing a wretched win- 
 ter, " out of health and out of spirits; " in March, 1856, he 
 starts for Italy, and visits Bologna, Parma, Verona, Modena, 
 Florence, and Naples; he recovers his health, and returns to 
 Dresden in June, 1856 ; to Paris in July and back to America 
 early in the autumn, to take up the duties of his professorship, 
 which he held for seventeen years thereafter ; he gives up his 
 home at Elm wood temporarily and goes to reside with his 
 brother-in-law, Dr. Howe, in Cambridge; he gives two 
 courses of lectures each year at Harvard ; in the summer of 
 1857 he marries Miss Frances Dunlap, and in the following 
 autumn becomes editor of the then newly established Atlantic 
 Monthly y he lectures in New York City in February, 1857 ; 
 during 1858 he writes that he is " working often fifteen hours 
 a day ; " in 1859 he begins a correspondence with Thomas 
 Hughes ; he returns to Elm wood in the spring of 1861, and 
 during the same year writes " The Washers of the Shroud ;" 
 he begins the second series of " Biglow Papers," and resigns 
 the editorship of the Atlantic in May, 1861 ; he gives up 
 the "Biglow Papers" in June, 1862, saying, "It's no use 
 
 my brain must lie fallow a while." 
 
 Early in 1864 he becomes joint editor of the North Ameri- 
 can Review with Professor C. E. Norton ; he edits a volume of 
 " Old Dramatists" in August, 1864 ; in July, 1865, he writes 
 37 
 
LOWELL 
 
 and reads at the Harvard memorial exercises his " Com- 
 memoration Ode " " so rapt with the fervor of conception 
 as I have not been these ten years; " but, a little later, he is 
 " ashamed at having been again tempted into thinking that I 
 could write poetry, a delusion from which I have been toler- 
 ably free these dozen years ; " he continues his studies in Ger- 
 man literature in 1865, but chafes at the drudgery of his pro- 
 fessorship, saying, " If I can sell some of my land and slip my 
 neck out of this collar again, I shall be a man. . . . My 
 professorship is wearing me out; " concerning his financial 
 receipts from his magazine articles, he writes in December, 
 1865, " For some years I have had twice fifty dollars for what- 
 ever I write and three or four times fifty for a long poem; " he 
 becomes a contributor to the Nation in 1866, and begins a cor- 
 respondence with Leslie Stephen ; he prints his last " Biglow 
 Paper" in the Atlantic for May, 1866, and publishes during 
 that year a complete series of the " Biglow Papers" with a 
 long introduction on "Yankeeisms " ("getting $820 for my 
 last six weeks' work ") ; he writes " The Nightingale in the 
 Study " in 1867, and continues his " annual dissatisfaction " 
 of lecturing at Harvard ; in October, 1868, he publishes a new 
 volume of old poems entitled "Under the W-illows;" during 
 the summer of 1869 he writes his long poem " The Cathedral " 
 (published in the Atlantic for January, 1870) ; in the winter of 
 1870 he visits Washington, stopping to lecture at Baltimore ; 
 during the summer of 1870 he studies old French metrical 
 romances, averaging twelve hours a day, and writes, "I long 
 to give myself to poetry again before I get so old that I have 
 only strength and no music left;" he entertains Thomas 
 Hughes at Elm wood in the autumn ; in July, 1871, he sells 
 " my birthright [part of the land at Elmwood] for a mess of 
 pottage," and writes to Leslie Stephen, "It will give me 
 about $5,000 a year, and Mabel [his daughter] about $400 
 more;" he retains the Elmwood house with two acres; he 
 publishes "Among My Books" in 1870 and "My Study 
 
 
LOWELL 579 
 
 Windows " in 1871 ; he resigns the Harvard professorship in 
 
 1872, writing to Miss Norton, "It takes a good while to 
 slough off the effect of seventeen years of pedagogy; " he 
 publishes his essay on Dante, and sails for Europe the third 
 time in 1872 ; he lands at Queenstown, and visits Dublin and 
 Chester en route to London; thence to Paris (" picking up 
 books here and there"), where he meets Emerson ; in June, 
 
 1873, he receives D.C.L. from Oxford, and leaves Paris, 
 making a tour of Belgium, Holland, and Germany, and 
 reaching Venice in October ; thence to Florence ; at Rome, 
 in January and February, 1874, and to Naples in March; 
 while at Rome he writes his " Elysian Argosy" (published in 
 the Atlantic for May, 1874); back to Paris in May, 1874, 
 and to America in July. 
 
 During 1875 he publishes in the Atlantic\ns essay on Spen- 
 ser and his Centennial Ode, ''Under the Old Elm," and in 
 book form the second series of "Among My Books," con- 
 taining the essays on Dante, Spenser, Wordsworth, Shelley, 
 and Keats ; he lectures again at Harvard, and writes for the 
 Nation two poems entitled " The World's Fair, 1876," and 
 " Tempora mutantur" both of which excite some popular 
 condemnation ; he becomes actively interested in political 
 reform in April, 1876, and is made, successively, a delegate 
 to the State and national conventions the latter at Cincin- 
 nati, where Hayes was nominated ; he writes his " Ode for the 
 Fourth of July, 1876," read at the Philadelphia Centennial 
 Celebration ; he declines repeated popular invitations to run 
 for Congress, is made a Presidential elector, and continues 
 lecturing at Harvard in the autumn of 1876 ; he visits Wash- 
 ington in February, 1877, stopping at Baltimore to give a 
 course of lectures at Johns Hopkins University ; he is offered 
 by President Hayes the embassy to Austria and afterward that 
 to Germany, but declines both. 
 
 In June, 1877, he is appointed Minister to Spain, and sails 
 thither in July, visiting Paris and London en route and reach- 
 
580 LOWELL 
 
 ing Madrid in August ; he finds his ministerial duties unex- 
 pectedly heavy, and suffers from the gout (as he had suffered 
 for years) ; he visits Seville, Cordova, and Granada during 
 the winter of 187778 ; in the spring of 1878 he makes a two 
 months' tour through Southern France, Italy, and Greece, 
 returning to Madrid in July ; he entertains General Grant 
 therein October; on January 19, 1870, he receives his ap- 
 pointment as Minister to England, and accepts on condition 
 of a two months' interim; in the autumn of 1881 he makes 
 another tour through Germany and Italy, as far as Rome, 
 returning to London in January, 1882 ; during 1884 he is 
 elected Lord Rector of St. Andrew's, and receives a doctor's 
 degree from the University of Edinburgh and LL.D. from 
 Harvard; he delivers his address on "Democracy" at Bir- 
 mingham in October, 1884, and makes several other public 
 addresses in England, about this time, winning great popu- 
 larity there ; he incurs the hostility of Irish-American poli- 
 ticians by certain official action during 1884; during 1885 
 he loses his second wife in London, and is recalled by Presi- 
 dent Cleveland, reaching America in June ; unable to bear 
 the associations at Elm wood, he settles at Southborough, 
 Mass., with his daughter and her family ; he publishes 
 "Democracy and other Addresses" in 1886, and revisits 
 London during the summer; he receives great public honors, 
 visits Gladstone, and returns in the autumn ; in November, 
 1886, he delivers an address on the 25oth anniversary of the 
 founding of Harvard ; in 1887 he is receiving $2,000 a year 
 from his general copyrights; he spends the summer of 1887 
 in England ; during 1888 he re-edits and publishes his poems, 
 attends the anniversary of the University of Bologna as Har- 
 vard's representative, and spends the summer in England, at 
 Whitby ; he is at Whitby again in 1889, returning to 
 America in October and settling with his daughter at his old 
 Elmwood home ; he is severely ill during the spring of 1890 ; 
 he dies at Elmwood, August 12, 1891. 
 
LOWELL 581 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON LOWELL. 
 
 Stedman, E. C, " Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
 
 flin & Co., 304-348. 
 Curtis, G. \V., "Orations and Addresses." New York, 1894, Harper, 
 
 3: 367-398. 
 Haweis, H. R., "American Humorists." London, 1883, Chatto & 
 
 Windus, 73-134. 
 Underwood, F. H., "James Russell Lowell, the Poet and the Man." 
 
 Boston, 1893, Lee & Shepard. 
 Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
 
 2: 186-204. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor & 
 
 Fields, 68-71. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Outlooks on Society." Boston, 1888, Ticknor, 
 
 306-314. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., " American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 78-79. 
 Bungay, G. \V., " Off- Hand Sketches." New York, 1854, Dewitt & 
 
 Douglass, 394-400. 
 Underwood, F. H., "James Russeli Lowell, a Biographical Sketch." 
 
 Boston, 1882, Osgood & Co. 
 
 James, H., "Essays in London, "etc. New York, 1893, Harper, 44-80. 
 Stead, W., " Character Sketches." London, 1892, Hodder & Stoughton, 
 
 120-134. 
 
 Taylor, B., "Critical Essays." New York, 1880, Putnam, 298-301. 
 Nichol, J., "American Literature." Edinburgh, 1855, Black, 220-412. 
 Wilkinson, W. C., "Free Lance." New York, 1874, Mason, 50. 
 Poe, E. A., "Works." New York, 1855, Redfield, 3: 275-282. 
 Lowell, J. R., "A Fable for Critics" (Lowell's Works). Cambridge, 
 
 1892, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 3: 1-95. 
 
 " Lowell, J. R., Letters of " (C. E. Norton). New York, 1894, Harper. 
 Brown, E. E., " Life of J. R. Lowell." Boston, 1887, Ticknor. 
 Welsh, A. H., " Development of English Literature." Chicago, 1882, 
 
 Griggs, 2: 390-393- 
 Curtis, G. W., "Homes of American Authors." New York, 1853, 
 
 Putnam, 349-366. 
 Underwood, F. H., " Builders of American Literature." Boston, 1893, 
 
 Lee & Shepard. 
 North American Review, 52: 452-466 (G. S. Hillard) ; 58: 283-299 
 
 (C. G. Felton); 66: 458-482 (F. Bowen) ; 153: 460-467 (R. H. 
 
 Stoddard) ; 68: 182-190 (F. Bowen). 
 
582 LOWELL 
 
 North British Review, 46 : 472-482. 
 
 Scnbner's Magazine, 4 : 75-86 and 227-237 and 339-345 (W. C. Wil- 
 kinson). 
 
 Harper's Magazine, 62: 252-273 (Underwood); 86: 846-850 (C. E. 
 Norton). 
 
 Century Magazine, 2: 97-112 (Stedman); 21 : 113-118 (S. E. Wood- 
 berry) ; 21 : 119-120 (J. Benton) ; 2 : 97-111 (E. C. Stedman). 
 The Literary World, 16 : 217-225(0. D. Warner). 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 38: 78-89 (H. D. Traill) ; 50: 310-324 (Sidney 
 Low). 
 
 The Nineteenth Century, 17: 988-1008(0. B. Smith). 
 
 The Spectator, 58 : 744-745 (H. D. Traill). 
 
 The Nation, 53: ii6-u8(T. W. Higginson); 57: 488-489(7. W. Hig- 
 ginson) ; 34 : 438- (E. L. Godkin). 
 
 The Critic, 9: 75-76 (Editor) ; 11: 85-96 (T. B. Aldrich) ; 16 : 82-83 
 and 291-292 (Editor). 
 
 Chicago Dial, 7: 241-243 (M. B. Anderson); 12: 133-135 (O. F 
 Emerson). 
 
 Andover Review, 16 : 294-300 (Editor). 
 
 The Arena, 14: 504-529 (H. Garland); 9: 705 (W. J Savage). 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, 150: 454-460 and 589-590 (W. W Story). 
 
 Contemporary Review, 60: 477-498 (F. H. Underwood). 
 
 Literary World, 22: 290-291 (J. W. Parsons). 
 
 New England Magazine, 5: 183-192 (E. E. Hale). 
 
 Unitarian Revie^v, 36 : 436-455 (J. W. Chadwick). 
 
 Good Words, 28: 521-527 (F. H. Underwood). 
 
 Review of Reviews, 4: 287-291 (J. F. Jamieson) and 291-294 (C. T. 
 Winchester) and 294-296 (R. D. Jones) and 296-310 (W. T. Stead). 
 
 The Spectator, 66 : 693-694. 
 
 Gentleman's Magazine, 15 : 464-487 (Haweis). 
 
 Atlantic Monthly,**): 35-50 (H. James); 70: 744-757 (W. } Still- 
 man) ; 56 : 263-265 (O W. Holmes). 
 
 Our Day, 8: 347-356 and 444-453 (F. H. Underwood). 
 
 Lippincotfs Magazine, 50: 534-541 (R. H. Stoddard) 
 
 Fortnightly Review, 44 : 79-85 (H. D. Traill). 
 
 Cntia, 8: 151 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 i. Culture Erudition Allusiveness. If Spenser is 
 'the poet's poet," Lowell is certainly the poet of the man of 
 
LOWELL 583 
 
 culture. While he is intelligible and delightful to the ordi- 
 nary reader, his pages abound in allusions and evidences of 
 scholarship that delight the more cultivated classes. The 
 pleasure felt on recognizing the force of some allusion, per- 
 haps hidden to the ordinary mind, is doubtless akin to that 
 felt at guessing some conundrum or at being recognized in 
 company by some eminent personage. 
 
 " Lowell was a scholar in the best sense of the word, pos- 
 sessing a thorough knowledge of English literature and criti- 
 cally conversant with other literatures as well the classics of 
 Greece and Rome and the classics of Spain and Italy, France 
 and Germany. A scholar not a pedant, he mastered his 
 learning, and it profited him in the large horizons which it 
 disclosed to his spiritual vision and the felicity and dignity 
 which it imparted to his style. Gentleman and scholar in all 
 that he wrote, there is that in his writing which declares a 
 greater intellect than it reveals. . . . He is regarded 
 not only as a man of letters^but as a fine exemplar of cult- 
 ure, and of a culture so generous as to be thought supra- 
 American. . . . We count Lowell as a specimen not of 
 foreign but of home culture, and especially of our Eastern 
 type. . . . Lowell's culture has not bred in him an un- 
 due respect for polish and for established ways and forms. 
 Precisely the opposite. Much learning and a fertile mind 
 incline him to express minute shades of his fancy by a most 
 iconoclastic use of words and prefixes. He is not a writer for 
 dullards, and to read him enjoyably is a point in evidence of 
 a liberal education. ... A pedant quotes for the sake 
 of a display of his learning ; Lowell, because he has mastered 
 everything connected with his theme. . . . The fine 
 thing about Lowell was his plentiful and original genius. 
 This was so rich that he never was compelled, like many 
 writers, to hoard his thoughts or be miserly with his bright 
 sayings. When warmed by companionship and in talk he 
 gave full play to his spontaneity, and said enough witty and 
 
584 LOWELL 
 
 epigrammatic and poetic things to set up a dozen small talkers 
 or writers." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "His love and mastery of books was extraordinary, and 
 his devotion to study so relentless that in those earlier years 
 he studied sometimes fourteen hours in the day, and pored 
 over books until his sight seemed to desert him. 
 Probably no American student was so deeply versed in the 
 old French romance ; none knew Dante and the Italian more 
 profoundly ; German literature was familiar to him, and per- 
 haps even Ticknor, in his own domain of Spanish lore, was 
 not more a master than Lowell. . . . His extraordinary 
 knowledge, whether of out-door or of in-door derivation, and 
 the racy humor in which his knowledge was fused, overflowed 
 his conversation. There is no historic circle of wits and 
 scholars ... to which Lowell's abundance would not 
 have contributed a golden drop and his glancing wit a rep- 
 artee." George William Curtis. 
 
 " Few readers know what deep and rich philosophy, what 
 fruits of thought and culture, are to be found in some of 
 Lowell's works. ... If our literature shall ever fade and 
 die in the coming centuries, and some future reader shall 
 stumble upon [his] books, he will easily and excusably 
 wax highly enthusiastic over the unquestionable wealth of 
 thought therein discovered. . . ' . He was a scholar 
 of thorough culture in more than one field." C. F. Rich- 
 ardson. 
 
 " The loss which America sustained in the death of Mr. 
 Lowell in August, 1891, and of Mr. Curtis in August, 1892, 
 was the loss of the two men who, during their generation, 
 had most truly represented the ideals of American culture and 
 ci ti zenshi p. " Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 " The poet's mind had long dealt with abstruse ideas, and 
 was fertile in recondite allusion ; he never seemed to think 
 that even fairly read people might need a clue tojiis meaning. 
 Lowell is one of the most favorable examples of American 
 
LOWELL 585 
 
 culture. He has profited by the literatures of all nations, but 
 he has been the disciple of no one literary master ; . . . 
 he is eminent among scholars and capable, discreet, and dis- 
 tinguished among public men. . . . The best things in 
 all tongues naturally gravitated to him ; .and it is difficult for 
 any but the most curiously learned to say whether he seemed 
 more at home with the philosophic authors of Germany, the 
 great poet of Italy, the immortal romancer of Spain, the brill- 
 iant wit and classic finish of the French, or with the long line 
 of poets, chroniclers, and thinkers of our own home. . . . 
 There is nothing in Lowell's odes obscure to a well-trained 
 mind ; but, unfortunately, all minds are not so trained as to 
 dissolve his thought from out the richly incrusted diction. So 
 it remains that the stronger poems of Lowell are beyond the 
 comprehension of all but cultivated readers. . . . Low- 
 ell's prose is like cloth-of-gold too splendid and too cum- 
 brous for every-day wear." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " Mr. Lowell is the last person, . . . to scorn or deny 
 the tributaries which have washed down their many golden 
 sands into his bright lake. . . . Lowell's poetry has 
 simply gone on perfecting itself in form and finish till now he 
 is as complete a specimen of ' a literary man's poet ' of the 
 consummate artist of expression as it would be easy to find 
 in a summer day's hunt through a well-filled library. Around 
 the stormy topics of war, slavery, and politics plays an inces- 
 sant summer lightning of literary, antiquarian, and instructive 
 social and domestic twitter." H. R. Haweis. 
 
 At the time of Lowell's death, a writer in the London 
 Times declared: " With him there passes away one of the 
 very few Americans who were the equals of any son of the old 
 world of any Frenchman or any Englishman in that inde- 
 finable mixture of qualities which we sum up, for want of a 
 better word, under the name of culture. . . . Wherever 
 official business was not too heavy, he invariably read for a 
 minimum of four hours a day. This did not include the time 
 
586 LOWELL 
 
 that he gave to ephemeral literature ; it was the time that he 
 spent in the serious reading of books, generally old books." 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Elfish daughter of Apollo ! 
 
 Thee, from thy father stolen and bound 
 To serve in Vulcan's clangorous smithy, 
 Prometheus (primal Yankee) found, 
 
 Then, perfidious ! having got 
 Thee in the net of his devices, 
 Sold thee into endless slavery, 
 Made thee a drudge to boil the pot, 
 Thee, Helios' daughter, who dost bear 
 His likeness in thy golden hair ; 
 Thee, by nature wild and wavery, 
 Palpitating, evanescent 
 As the shade of Dian's crescent, 
 Life, motion, gladness, everywhere ! " 
 
 Hymn to My Fire. 
 
 " When next upon the page I chance, 
 Like Poussin's nymphs my pulses dance, 
 And whirl my fancy where it sees 
 JPan piping 'neath Arcadian trees, 
 Whose leaves no winter-scenes rehearse, 
 Still young and glad as Homer's verse. 
 * What mean,' I ask, ' these sudden joys ? 
 This feeling fresher than a boy's ? 
 What makes this line, familiar long, 
 New as the first bird's April song? ' 
 I could, with sense illumined thus, 
 Clear doubtful texts in Aeschylus ! " 
 
 The Pregnant Comment. 
 
 "** Phoebus, sitting one day in a laurel-tree's shade, 
 Was reminded of Daphne, of whom it was made ; 
 For the god being one day too warm in his wooing, 
 She took to the tree to escape his pursuing ; 
 
LOWELL 587 
 
 Be the cause what it might, from his offers she shrunk, 
 
 And, Ginevra-like, shut herself up in a trunk ; 
 
 And, though 't was a step into which he had driven her, 
 
 He somehow or other had never forgiven her ; 
 
 Her memory he nursed as a kind of a tonic, 
 
 Something bitter to chew when he'd play the Byronic, 
 
 And I can't count the obstinate nymphs that he brought over, 
 
 By a strange kind of smile he put on when he thought of her. 
 
 ' My case is like Dido's ' he sometimes remark'd ; 
 
 ' When I last saw my love, she was fairly embark'd.' " 
 
 A Fable for Critics. 
 
 2. Independence Sincerity Manliness. From 
 the beginning to the end of his career, Lowell exemplified by 
 contrast the force of his own stirring lines : 
 
 " They are slaves who dare not be 
 In the right with two or three." 
 
 Holmes spoke of Lowell on the latter's seventieth birthday 
 as one 
 
 " Who, born a poet, grasps his trenchant rhymes 
 And strikes unshrinking at the nation's crimes ! " 
 
 " He never feared and never shrinked the obligation to be 
 positive. Firm and liberal critic as he was, and with noth- 
 ing of party spirit in his utterance save in the sense that his 
 sincerity was his party, -his mind had little affinity with super- 
 fine estimates and shades and tints of opinion : when he felt 
 at all he felt altogether." Henry James. 
 
 " His patriotic distinction, and his ennobling influence 
 upon the character and lives of generous American youth, 
 gave him power to speak with more authority than any living 
 American for the intellect and conscience of America. . . . 
 As he allowed no church or sect to dictate his religious views 
 or to control his daily conduct, so he permitted no party to 
 direct his political action. He was a Whig, an Abolitionist, 
 
588 LOWELL 
 
 a Republican, a Democrat, according to his conception of the 
 public exigency." George William Curtis. 
 
 "The war poems were thrilling, concentrating the pro- 
 found emotions of a nation. There was so noble a fervor in 
 them, and all were so distinctively elevated in tone, as to 
 challenge for the America from which they sprang a greater 
 affection and reverence than many in this country had been 
 previously wont to pay her. . . . Although Mr. Lowell 
 was in antagonism with the feeling of the majority of his 
 countrymen upon these matters [the invasion of Mexico and 
 the Slavery Question], he did not flinch from what he deemed 
 to be his duty, but lashed out against the popular notions 
 with vigor. He had the courage to be in the right when it 
 was not so easy as it is now." G. B. Smith. 
 
 "Lowell always produced the impression that he was in 
 himself greater than anything he had done, and those who 
 listened to him looked for a crescendo in his career. 
 ["The Present Crisis " and other poems] gave hope for upr 
 lifting the lowly by active sympathy ; they rebuked the jar- 
 ring sects with parables of mutual forbearance and Christian 
 love. ... In Lowell's verses there was something of 
 Wordsworth's simplicity, something of Tennyson's sweetness 
 and musical flow, and something more of the manly earnest- 
 ness of the Elizabethan poets." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " The sort of high thinking and plain speaking which did 
 more than anything else to remedy this state of things [Sla- 
 very] and to blow the liberation spark into a second flame, is 
 to be found in [his] . . . utterance. . . . Never 
 did any man trust himself more unreservedly to the guidance 
 of a ' blazing principle.' . . . Behind the mark is a 
 man terribly in earnest but not over a crotchet over a pas- 
 sion which he knows sleeps in the heart of all, and must be 
 aroused the love of freedom." H. R. Haweis.^, 
 
 
LOWELL 589 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Men ! whose boast it is that ye 
 Come of fathers brave and free, 
 If there breathe on earth a slave, 
 Are ye truly free and brave ? 
 
 They are slaves who fear to speak 
 
 For the fallen and the weak ; 
 
 They are slaves who will not choose 
 
 Hatred, scoffing, and abuse 
 
 Rather than in silence shrink 
 
 From the truth they needs must think." 
 
 Stanzas on Freedom. 
 
 Then to side with truth is noble when we share her wretched 
 
 crust, 
 Ere her cause bring fame and profit, and 'tis prosperous to be 
 
 just ; 
 Then it is the brave man chooses, while the coward stands 
 
 aside, 
 
 Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is crucified, 
 And the multitude make virtue of the faith they had denied." 
 
 The Present Crisis. 
 
 " I do not fear to follow out the truth, 
 Albeit along the precipice's edge. 
 Let us speak plain ; there is more force in names 
 Than most men dream of ; and a lie may keep 
 Its throne a whole age longer, if it skulk 
 ehind the shield of some fair-seeming name." 
 
 A Glance Behind the Curtain. 
 
 3. Didacticism. In his "Fable for Critics," Lowell 
 says justly of himself : 
 
 " There's Lowell, who's striving Parnassus to climb 
 With a whole bale of isms tied together with rhyme, 
 
 The top of the hill he will ne'er come nigh reaching 
 
 Till he learns the distinction 'twixt singing and preaching." 
 
59 LOWELL 
 
 "Lowell's progressive ' verse often was fuller of opinion 
 than beauty, of eloquence than passion. . . . The 
 thought, the purpose these are the main ends with Lowell, 
 though prose or metre suffer for it. . . . His doctrines 
 and reflections, in the midst of an ethereal distillation, at times 
 act like the single drop of prose which, as he reports a saying 
 of Landor to Wordsworth, precipitates the whole. . . . 
 If Whittier and Lowell, like the Lake Poets before them, be- 
 came didactic through moral earnestness, it none the less 
 aided to inspire them. Their verses advanced a great cause, 
 and, as the years went by, grew in quality perhaps as surely 
 as that of poets who, in youth, reject all but artistic consider- 
 ations." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 (( Song, satire, and parable more and more as he lives and 
 ponders and pours forth are all so many pulpit illustrations 
 or platform pleas." H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " The primary quality of Lowell's intellect, so far as one is 
 able to understand it from an examination of his literary work 
 as a whole, was not so much that of the poet or the critic or 
 the essayist as the preacher. This was the vocation the task 
 for which he had a ' Call ; ' and he felt it so himself, and 
 knew, as men do in such cases, that it was at once the source 
 of his weakness and his strength. ... It is perfectly 
 true that Lowell's ascent of the Parnassian steep was somewhat 
 seriously impeded by the republicanism, Neo-Calvinism, Old 
 Liberalism, Humanitarianism, Meliorism, and the rest of the 
 formidable spiritual baggage which he had to haul behind 
 him. . . . The preacher in him, during at least the 
 earlier and more characteristic period of his work, was more 
 than the scholar, more than the critic or the poet. . . . 
 Much of Lowell's teaching is like Carlyle's, a discourse on the 
 text ' work while you have the light. ' Sidney Low. 
 
 " There is a high aim and a definite moral purpose in the 
 ' Biglow Papers.' . . . His poems have body as well 
 as spirit ; they touch the heart as well as stimulate the intel- 
 
LOWELL 591 
 
 lect ; they inculcate nobleness, purity, and brotherly love, 
 and tend to raise the soul above sordid views of life." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " New occasions teach new duties ; time makes ancient good 
 uncouth ; 
 
 They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast 
 of Truth ; 
 
 Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires! We ourselves must pil- 
 grims be, 
 
 Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 
 winter sea, 
 
 Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted 
 Key." The Present Crisis. 
 
 11 Where'er a single slave doth pine, 
 Where'er one man may help another 
 Thank God for such a birthright, brother ! 
 That spot of earth is thine and mine ; 
 There is the true man's birthplace grand ! 
 His is a world-wide fatherland ! " The Fatherland. 
 
 " Life may be given in many ways, 
 
 And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
 As bravely in the closet as in the field, 
 
 So bountiful is Fate ; 
 
 But thus to stand beside her, 
 
 When craven churls deride her, 
 To front a lie in arms and not to yield, 
 
 This shows, methinks, God's plan 
 
 And measure of stalwart man, 
 
 Limbed like the old heroic breeds, 
 
 Who stands self-poised on manhood's solid earth, 
 
 Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
 'Fed from within with all the strength he needs." 
 
 Commemoration Ode 
 
 4. Appreciation of Nature. "There is a beautiful 
 feeling in his poems of nature. . . . The charm of Low- 
 
5Q2 LOWELL 
 
 ell's outdoor verse lies in its spontaneity ; he loves nature 
 with a child-like joy, her boon companion, finding even in 
 her illusions welcome and relief, just as one gives himself up 
 to a story or a play, and will not be a doubter. Here he 
 never ages, and he beguiles you and me to share his joy. It 
 does me good to see a poet who knows a bird or flower as 
 one friend knows another, yet loves it for itself alone. 
 What Lowell loves most in nature are the trees and their 
 winged habitants and the flowers that grow untended. 
 Give him a touch of Mother Earth, a breath of free air, one 
 flash of sunshine, and he is no longer a book-man and a 
 brooder; his blood runs riot with the Spring; this inborn, 
 poetic elasticity is the best gift of the gods. Lowell trusts in 
 Nature, and she gladdens him. . . . There is little of the 
 ocean in his verse ; the sea-breeze brings fewer messages to 
 him than to Longfellow and Whittier. His sense of inland 
 nature is all the more alert ; for him the sweet security of 
 meadow paths and orchard closes. He has the pioneer heart, 
 to which a homestead farm is dear and familiar, and native 
 woods and waters are an intoxication." E. C. Stedman. 
 During Lowell's life Holmes wrote of him : 
 
 " He is the poet who can stoop to read 
 The secret hidden in a wayside weed ; 
 Whom June's warm breath with child-like rapture fills, 
 Whose spirit ' dances with the daffodils. ' " 
 
 And after the death of Lowell his brother-poet sings again : 
 
 " How Nature mourns thee in the still retreat 
 
 Where passed in peace thy love-enchanted hours ! 
 Where shall we find an eye like thine to greet 
 
 Spring's earliest foot-prints on her opening flowers? 
 Have the pale wayside weeds no fond regret 
 
 For him who read the secrets they unfold ? 
 Shall the proud spangles of the field forget 
 
 The verse that lent new glory to their gold ? " 
 
LOWELL 593 
 
 " His love and knowledge of nature were not those of a 
 poet alone, not mere Wordsworthian sentiment, but such as 
 showed, as Darwin long afterward said, to Lowell's great dis- 
 pleasure, that he had in him the making of a naturalist." 
 Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 " So acute and trained an observer of nature, so sympathetic 
 a friend of birds and flowers, so sensitive to the influence and as- 
 pects of out-of-door life, that Darwin with frank admiration said 
 that he was born to be a naturalist." George William Curtis. 
 
 11 He used to enter upon the long walks which have aided 
 in making him one of the poets of nature with the keenest 
 zest. There was no quicker eye for a bird or squirrel, a rare 
 flower or bush, and no more accurate ear for the songs or the 
 commoner sounds of the forest. ... In landscape he 
 sees the natural object and he paints it \ but through it he 
 seesalso its significance and its ideal relations. . . . Low- 
 ell apparently sympathizes with Chaucer in his joy in nature 
 and in his pleasure in the study of character. . . . When 
 out for a walk nothing escaped him not the plumage of a 
 bird, the leafage of a tree, the color of a blossom, nor a trait 
 upon a human countenance. He knew almost every bird by 
 its note, its color, and its flight. He knew where flowers 
 grew and when they should appear. All this knowledge might 
 have been possessed by a person with little sentiment ; but it 
 was with the eye of love that Lowell looked upon the world." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Dear common flower, that grow'st beside the way, 
 Fringing the dusty road with harmless gold, 
 
 Thou art my tropics and mine Italy ; 
 To look at thee unlocks a warmer clime ; 
 The eyes thou givest me 
 
 Are in the heart, and heed not space or time : 
 Not in mid June the golden cuirassed bee 
 38 
 
594 LOWELL 
 
 Feels a more summer-like warm ravishment 
 In the white lily's breezy tent, 
 His fragrant Sybaris, than I, when first 
 From the dark green thy yellow circles burst." 
 
 To the Dandelion. 
 
 " Dear marshes ! vain to him the gift of sight 
 Who cannot in their various incomes share, 
 From every season drawn, of shade and light, 
 Who sees in them but levels brown and bare ; 
 Each change of storm or sunshine scatters free 
 On them its largess of variety ; 
 
 For Nature with cheap means still works her wonders rare." 
 
 An Indian- Summer Reverie. 
 
 " Once on a time there was a pool 
 
 Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool 
 
 And spotted with cow-lilies garish, 
 
 Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. 
 
 Alders the creaking red-wings sink on, 
 
 Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln 
 
 Hedged round the unassailed seclusion 
 
 Where musk-rats piled their cells Carthusian, 
 
 And many a moss-embroidered log, 
 
 The wintering-place of summer frog, 
 
 Slept and decayed with patient skill, 
 
 As wintering places sometimes will." Festina Lente. 
 
 5. Skill in Portraiture. In spite of Poe's virulent re- 
 joinder, the " Fable for Critics " has taken its place in the 
 treasure-house of our national literature as generally a fair and 
 good-natured series of portraits. . . . The portraits in 
 Fitz Adam's Story are more like those of the immortal Can- 
 terbury pilgrims than any we have had since. 
 
 " Lowell's portrait of Lincoln in the ' Commemoration 
 Ode ' is delineated in a manner that gives this poet a pre- 
 eminence among those who capture likeness in enduring verse, 
 that we award to Velasquez among those who fasten it upon 
 the canvas." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 ' 'We may not always agree with him in his estimate of 
 
LOWELL 595 
 
 Dryden, for example it is difficult to do so but there he is, 
 with an enviable power of analysis and a capacity to enter 
 into the very souls of some of our cherished literary gods, 
 which we can but envy." G. B. Smith, 
 
 " Fond of frontiers-men and their natural ways, he puts 
 them in a line ' The shy, wood-wandering brood of charac- 
 ter. ' He paints the landlord of the rustic inn. The picture 
 seems as deep-lined and lasting as one of Chaucer's. Under- 
 neath the fun and riot [in "A Fable for Critics"] we find 
 outlined portraits and swift estimates, which, though not al- 
 ways wholly just, are of marvellous acuteness and force. Some 
 of the sketches for instance, those of Emerson, Whittier, 
 and Hawthorne in their general faithfulness and power of 
 discrimination are the best ever made of these men either in 
 verse or prose. . . . ' A Fable for Critics ' is the wittiest 
 of literary satires and the most faithful of caricatures." F. H. 
 Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " No eye like his to value horse or cow, 
 Or gauge the contents of a stack or mow ; 
 He could foretell the weather at a word, 
 He knew the haunt of every beast and bird ; 
 
 Hard-headed and soft-hearted, you'd scarce meet 
 A kindlier mixture of the shrewd and sweet ; 
 Generous by birth, and ill at saying ' no,' 
 Yet in a bargain he was all men's foe ; 
 Would yield no inch of vantage in a trade, 
 And give away ere nightfall all he made." 
 
 Fitz Adam's Story. 
 
 " His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind, 
 Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
 A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
 Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined, 
 Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
 Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest stars. 
 
596 LOWELL 
 
 Our children shall behold his fame, 
 The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing man, 
 Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not blame, 
 New birth of our new soil, the first American." 
 
 Commemoration Ode. 
 
 " There is Bryant, as quiet, as cool, and as dignified 
 As a smooth, silent iceberg, that never is ignified, 
 Save when by reflection 'tis kindled o' nights 
 With a semblance of flame by the chill Northern Lights. 
 
 If he stir you at all, it is just, on my soul, 
 Like being stirred up by the very North Pole. 
 
 If I call him an iceberg, I don't mean to say 
 There is nothing in that which is grand in its way ; 
 He is almost the one of your poets that knows 
 How much force, strength, and dignity lie in repose ; 
 If he sometimes fall short, he is too wise to mar 
 >ught's modest fulness by going too far." 
 
 A Fable for Critics. 
 
 Humorous Satire Brilliancy. An English crit- 
 ic well defines all humor as " a subtle blending of the serious 
 with the comic," and adds: " But the combination of a 
 deep and generous sympathy with a keen perception of the 
 ludicrous is the substratum of the finest kind of humor ; and 
 it is that which enables * Biglow ' to pass without any sense of 
 discord from pure satire into strains of genuine poetry." 
 
 " Verse made only as satire belongs to a lower order. Of 
 such there are various didactic specimens. But wit has an imag- 
 inative side, and Humor springs like Iris all smiles and tears. 
 The wit of poets often has been the faculty that ripened last, 
 the overflow of their strength and experience. In the ' Biglow 
 Papers,' wit and humor are united as in a composition of high 
 grade. . . . Lowell has been compared to Butler, but 
 'Hudibras,' whether as poetry or historical satire, is vastly 
 below the master-work of the New England idyllist. 
 My own explanation of things which annoy us in his lof- 
 
LOWELL 597 
 
 tier pieces is that his every-day genius is that of wit and hu- 
 mor. . . . Here [in " The Biglow Papers "] was now seen 
 that maturity of genius, of which humor is a flower, reveal- 
 ing the sound, kind man within the poet. . . . The 
 jesting is far removed from that clownish gabble which, if it 
 still increases, will shortly add another to the list of offences 
 that make killing no murder." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Humor of the purest strain, but humor in deadly earnest. 
 In its course, as in that of a cyclone, it swept all before it 
 the press, the church, criticism, scholarship . . . the 
 Mexican war, pleas for slavery, and public men." George 
 William Curtis. 
 
 " Mr. Lowell is unquestionably a born humorist. He pos- 
 sesses a humor of thought which is at once broad and subtle ; 
 his humor of expression is his American birthright." H. D. 
 Trail!. 
 
 "They [the "Biglow Papers"] were forcible with the 
 humor which distinguishes great men who keep their eyes and 
 ears open. But besides this common -sense and this humor, 
 there were in the ' Biglow Papers ' a wisdom and wit which 
 were equally forcible and more rare." R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 " The ' Fable for Critics ' affords ample illustration of the 
 liveliness and sparkling spontaneity of his wit. . . . His 
 wit was not as kindly as it was ready ; his humor was always 
 genial." Charles Eliot Norton. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Wut's the use o' meetin'-goin' 
 Every Sabbath, wet or dry, 
 Ef it's right to go amowin' 
 Feller-men like oats an' rye ? 
 I dunno but wut it's pooty 
 Trainin* round in bobtail coats, 
 But it's curus Christian dooty 
 This 'ere cuttin folk's throats. 
 
598 LOWELL 
 
 I'm willin' a man should go tollable strong 
 
 Agin wrong in the abstract, for thet kind o' wrong 
 
 Is oilers unpop'lar, an' never gits pitied, 
 
 Because it's a crime no one ever committed ; 
 
 But he mustn't be hard on partickler sins, 
 
 Coz then he'll be kickin' the peoples' own shins." 
 
 Biglow l\ipers, 
 
 " The furniture stood round with such an air, 
 There seemed an old maid's ghost in every chair, 
 Which looked as it had scuttled to its place 
 And pulled extempore a Sunday face, 
 Too smugly proper for a world of sin, 
 Like boys on whom the minister comes in. 
 The table, fronting you with icy stare, 
 Strove to look witless that its legs were bare, 
 While the black sofa with its horsehair pall 
 Gloomed like a bier for Comfort's funeral." 
 
 Fitz Adam's Story. 
 
 11 Who always wear spectacles, always look bilious, 
 Always keep on good terms with each mater-familias 
 Throughout the whole parish, and manage to rear 
 Ten boys like themselves, on four hundred a year ; 
 Who, fulfilling in turn the same fearful conditions, 
 Either preach through their noses, or go upon missions. 
 In this way our hero got safely to college, 
 Where he bolted alike both his commons and knowledge ; 
 A reading-machine, always wound up and going, 
 He mastered whatever was not worth the knowing." 
 / A Fable for Critics. 
 
 \f 7. Wit. As distinguished from humor, we mean, by this 
 quality, that form of mental excitement and pleasure that 
 is due mainly to a perception of the incongruous. Lowell's 
 poems abound in grotesquely absurd situations and relations. 
 His wit also appears in his incomparable puns and in the fan- 
 tastic double rhymes, of which he is such a consummate mas- 
 ter. The "Fable for Critics" has been called "a hand- 
 gallop of loose verses. ' ' 
 
LOWELL 599 
 
 " The ' Fable ' is as full of puns as a pudding of plums. 
 The good ones are the best of their kind, strung together like 
 beads, and the bad ones are so ' atrocious ' as to be quite as 
 amusing. . . . No poem of the kind in the language 
 equals it in the two aspects of vivid genius and riotous 
 fun. .' . . Regarded as a mere repository of fun, 
 it is inimitable; but the author's are edged tools rather 
 than playthings, and they have been felt through the long 
 struggle. . . . One might believe that the brilliant rail- 
 lery which Lowell afterward turned upon the supporters of 
 slavery had its origin in a reaction from the monotonous ora- 
 tory of some of his associates. The public was found to be 
 keenly sensitive to the coruscation of wit, and sorely vulner- 
 able to the arrows of ridicule. . . . Its [" A Fable 
 for Critics"] grotesque macaronic lines, with impossible 
 rhymes, its exhaustless store of double-shotted puns, its keen 
 analysis and common-sense, make it one of the most enjoy- 
 able of satires. . . . The lines are as full of good- 
 humored counsel as of pungent wit. . . . The sharp 
 thrust in rustic phrase, the native wit, and the irony that 
 played upon the lines [of " Hosea Biglow "], making them 
 like live electric wires, produced a combination of mirth and 
 conviction wholly new. . . . [" A Fable for Critics"] is 
 the gay humor of a youth in the freedom of an anonymous 
 pasquinade revelling in puns, clashing unexpected and all 
 but impossible rhymes like cymbals, tossing off grotesque epi- 
 thets and comparisons, and going in a break-neck canter like 
 a race-horse let loose. . . . Wit was as natural to him as 
 breathing, and when the mood was on he could no more 
 avoid seeing and signalling puns than an inebriate could help 
 seeing double, but the wit and the puns were not the end and 
 aim of his talk. . . . Lowell's creations are humorous, 
 though some of them scatter witticisms like rice at a wed- 
 ding. . . . It is not risking much to say that it [" The 
 Biglow Papers "] is the wittiest and best -sustained satire in 
 
600 LOWELL 
 
 English. ... It must be repeated, by way of explana- 
 tion, that, from the first fly-leaf to the colophon, this is the 
 only complete and perfect piece of grotesque comedy in ex- 
 istence. . . . Materials for any number of Hoods exist 
 in it. ... The wit of Hosea Biglow is the native wit 
 of Lowell instantaneous as lightning and Hosea's common 
 sense is Lowell's birthright." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Let us glance for a moment, 'tis well worth the pains, 
 And note what an average graveyard contains ; 
 
 There are slave-drivers quietly whipped underground ; 
 There bookbinders, done up in boards, are fast bound ; 
 There card-players wait till the last trump be played, 
 There all the choice spirits get finally laid ; 
 There the babe that's unborn is supplied with a berth ; 
 There men without legs get their six feet of earth ; 
 There lawyers repose, each wrapped up in his case ; 
 There seekers of office are sure of a place. 
 
 Two dozen of Italy's exiles who shoot us his 
 Kaisership daily, stern pen-and-ink Brutuses, 
 
 Nine hundred Teutonic republicans stark 
 
 From Vaterland's battles just won in the Park, 
 
 Who the happy profession of martyrdom take 
 
 Whenever it gives them a chance at a steak ; 
 
 Sixty-two second Washingtons ; two or three Jacksons : 
 
 And so many everythings-else that it racks one's 
 
 Poor memory too much to continue the list, 
 
 Especially now they no longer exist." A Fable for Critics. 
 
 " He called an architect in counsel ; 
 'I want,' said he, 'a you know what, 
 (You are .a builder, I am Knott,) 
 A thing complete from chimney-pot 
 Down to the very groundsel ; 
 
LOWELL 
 
 60 1 
 
 Here's a half acre of good land ; 
 
 Just have it nicely mapped and planned 
 
 And make your workmen drive on ; 
 
 Meadow there is, and upland too, 
 
 And I should like a water-view, 
 
 D' you think you could contrive one ? 
 
 (Perhaps the pump and trough would do, 
 
 If painted a judicious blue) 
 
 The woodland I've attended to ; ' 
 
 (He meant three pines stuck up askew, 
 
 Two dead ones and a live one.) 
 
 ' A pocket-full of rocks, 't would take 
 
 To build a house of free-stone, 
 
 But then it is not hard to make 
 
 What nowadays is the stone ; 
 
 The cunning painter in a trice 
 
 Your house's outside petrifies, 
 
 And people think it very gneiss 
 
 Without inquiring deeper ; 
 
 My money never shall be thrown 
 
 Away on such a deal of stone, 
 
 When stone of deal is cheaper." 
 
 The Unhappy Lot of Mr. Knott. 
 
 " He kin' o' 1'itered on the mat, 
 
 Some doubtfle o' the sekle, 
 
 His heart kep' goin' pity-pat, 
 
 But hern went pity Zekle." The Courtin\ 
 
 8. Pathos. As is the case with all true masters of humor, 
 the fountains of Lowell's fun lie near the sources of his tears. 
 Such poems as "The Changeling,," "The First Snow-Fail," 
 and "The Two Angels " are rilled with the tenderest pathos. 
 
 " Lowell's wife died, leaving him in that gloom from which 
 came the series of short poems ... the best expression 
 of the finest side of the man's nature, ( The Wind-Harp/ 
 ' Auf Wiedersehen? 'After the Burial,' and 'The Dead 
 House ' expressions of the strong passions of grief. 
 The only thing I know in English poetry to set beside them 
 
6O2 LOWELL 
 
 for genuine pathos is the Break, break, break ' of Tennyson." 
 IV.J. Stillman. 
 
 " If the test of poetry be in its power over hearts, the ruth 
 in this series [later " Biglow Papers "] must be placed in the 
 highest rank. The beginning is quaint, simple, and even 
 humorous, but with a subdued tone ; there is no intimation of 
 the coming pathos. . . . We are led, stanza by stanza, 
 to the heights where thought and feeling become one. . . . 
 They [the lines in reference to the poet's three slain nephews] 
 are palpitant like naked nerves, and every word is like a leaf 
 plucked by Dante, which trickled blood. ... A letter 
 to the Editor of The Atlantic Monthly . . . breaks into 
 an agony of lament for the young heroes fallen in battle, and 
 closes with an apostrophe to Peace that few Americans . . . 
 can read, even for the twentieth time, with dry eyes." F. 
 If. Underwood. 
 
 " Of the Biglow epistles, the tenth has the most pathetic 
 undertone. . . . His heart is full with its own sorrows, 
 he half-despises himself ' for rhymin' ' when his young kins- 
 men have fallen in the fray." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "The deep pathos in some of Mr. Lowell's poems is as 
 striking as any of his other qualities. No common note was 
 reached in 'The First Snow-Fail;' ... he has written 
 nothing so touching and so exquisite as 'The Changeling.' 
 . . . It seems to us that the pathetic and unadorned sim- 
 plicity of this poem has never been surpassed by any English 
 writer. . . . The strongest utterances are the poems and 
 the ballads in which the author deals with human emotion. 
 For an example take * The Dead House,' whose pathos must 
 find its way to any heart. ... In some respects ' The 
 Cathedral ' deserves to rank as the highest of all of Mr. Low- 
 ell's poetical productions. . . . It is deeply introspective, 
 and is charged with pathetic memories of the long ago." G. 
 B. Smith. 
 
LOWELL 603 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 She had been with us scarce a twelvemonth, 
 
 And it hardly seemed a day, 
 
 When a troop of wandering angels 
 
 Stole my little daughter away ; 
 
 Or perhaps those heavenly zingari 
 
 But loosed the hampering strings, 
 
 And when they had opened her cage-door, 
 
 My little bird used her wings. 
 
 But they left in her stead a changeling, 
 
 A little angel child, 
 
 That seems like her bud in full blossom, 
 
 And smiles as she never smiled : 
 
 When I wake in the morning, I see it 
 
 Where she always used to lie, 
 
 And I feel as weak as a violet 
 
 Alone 'neath the awful sky." The Changeling. 
 
 While 'way o'erhead, ez sweet an' low 
 Ez distant bells thet ring for meetin* 
 
 The wedged wiP geese their bugles blow, 
 Further an' further south retreatin'. 
 
 The farm-smokes, sweetes' sight on air-th, 
 
 Slow thru the winter air a-shrinkin' 
 Seem kin' o' sad, an 'roun' the hearth 
 
 Of empty places set me thinkin.' " 
 
 Bigloiv Papers. 
 
 " I thought of a mound in sweet Auburn 
 Where a little headstone stood ; 
 How the flakes were folding it gently, 
 As did robins the babes in the wood. 
 
 I remembered the gradual patience 
 That fell from that cloud like snow, 
 Flake by flake, healing and hiding 
 The scar that renewed our woe. 
 
604 LOWELL 
 
 And again to the child I whispered, 
 
 * The snow that husheth all, 
 
 Darling, the merciful Father 
 
 Alone can make it fall ! ' " The First Snow-Fall. 
 
 K* 9. Deep Religious Instinct. Although Lowell often 
 ridiculed and always rebelled against that narrow "ortho- 
 doxy" in the midst of which he was reared, his poems prove 
 him to be possessed of a profound religious instinct. 
 
 " The deep religious instinct, emancipated from all forms, 
 but vibrating with the fitful certainty of an Aeolian harp to 
 ' the wind that bloweth where it listeth ' this is the first thing 
 in Lowell's mind, as it is the second in Longfellow's, and the 
 third in Bryant's." H. R. Haweis. 
 
 " The obvious characteristic of the poems [those first pub- 
 lished in the volume with the " Legend of Brittany "] is their 
 high religious spirit. It is not a mild and passive morality that 
 we perceive, but the aggressive force of primitive Christianity. 
 Though the physical aspect of evolution had engaged 
 his attention, as it has that of all intellectual men, and had 
 commanded perhaps a startling and dubious assent, yet his 
 strong spiritual nature recoiled in horror from the materialistic 
 application of the doctrine to the origin of things. Force 
 could never be to him the equivalent of spirit, nor law the 
 substitute for God. In conversation once upon the 'prom- 
 ise and potency' phrases of Tyndall, he exclaimed with 
 energy, 'Let whoever will believe that the idea of Hamlet 
 or Lear was developed from a clod; I will not." 1 F. ff, 
 Underwood. 
 
 11 In ' What Rabbi Jehosha Said,' and many other poems, 
 he teaches the grandeur of Christian charity and Christian 
 humility. In fact, he is one of the profoundest preachers in 
 the whole brotherhood of song." G. B. Smith. 
 
 " He is the poet of pluck and action and purpose, of the 
 
LOWELL 605 
 
 gayety and liberty of virtue. . . . His poetical perform- 
 ance might sometimes, no doubt, be more intensely lyrical, 
 but it is hard to see how it could be more intensely moral I 
 mean, of course, in the widest sense of the term. His play is 
 as good as a game in the open air ; but when he is serious 
 he is as serious as Wordsworth and much more compact." 
 Henry James. 
 
 "That justice and law and righteousness are things for 
 which any man with an immortal soul in him would willingly 
 die these formed the stock of axioms with which the son of 
 the Massachusetts minister started in life. . . . There is 
 hardly anything which Lowell wrote that is not calculated 
 and intended to awaken worthy ambition, generous effort, 
 and an earnest appreciation of purity, nobility, and truth, 
 whether in literature or life. . . . It is pleasant in his 
 last poems to note how the generous enthusiasm for progress, 
 the faith in an ideal, which were the legacies of his early train- 
 ing, remained, through all the bitterness of controversy and 
 after the militant scorn for the mean and unworthy had died 
 down into a placid tolerance." Sidney Low. 
 
 " At the root of his personality lay a deep moral earnest- 
 ness. Mr. Lowell was of Puritart descent ; and though the 
 training of three generations had refined all Puritan acerbity 
 and narrowness out of him, yet the aggressive moral temper 
 of the Puritan was still in his blood. . . . His own 
 ideas were rather moral than merely literary ; and all his best 
 writing, in poetry, at all events, has a distinct ethical motive." 
 C. T. Winchester. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 There is no broken reed so poor and base, 
 No rush, the bending tilt of swamp-fly blue, 
 But he therewith the ravening wolf can chase, 
 And guide his flock to springs and pastures new ; 
 
606 LOWELL 
 
 Through ways unlocked for and through many lands, 
 Far from the rich folds built with human hands, 
 The gracious foot-prints of His love I trace. 
 
 Slowly the Bible of the race is writ, 
 And not on paper leaves nor leaves of stone ; 
 Each age, each kindred, adds a verse to it, 
 Texts of despair or hope or joy or moan. 
 
 If the chosen soul could never be alone 
 
 In deep mid-silence, open-doored to God, 
 
 No greatness ever had been dreamed or done ; 
 
 Among dull hearts a prophet never grew ; 
 
 The nurse of full-grown souls is solitude." Columbus. 
 
 " I had a little daughter, 
 And she was given to me 
 To lead me gently backward 
 To the Heavenly Father's knee, 
 That I, by the force of nature, 
 Might in some dim wise divine 
 The depth of his infinite patience 
 To this way ward soul 
 
 Changing. 
 
 10. Idyllic Power. Lowell vies with Whittier in his 
 rare ability to picture homely rustic scenes and to bring out 
 the latent poetry concealed in rural home life. 
 
 "The ' Biglow Papers' were the first, and are the best, 
 metrical presentation of Yankee character in its thought, dia- 
 lect, and manners. . . . Never sprang the flower of art 
 from a more unpromising soil ; yet these are eclogues as true 
 as those of Theocritus or Burns. . . . This bucolic idyl 
 [" The CourthV "] is without a counterpart ; no richer juice 
 can be pressed from the wild grape of the Yankee soil." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " This [" The Coiirtin' "] is the most genuine of our native 
 idyls. It affects one like coming upon a new and quaint 
 
(WELL 
 
 607 
 
 blossoming orchid, or hearing Schumann's ' Einsame Blunted 
 . . . In ' The Courtin' ' and ' Somthin' in the Pastoral 
 Line ' he has shown for the first time the idyllic side of New 
 England life." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Zekle crep' up quite unbeknown 
 An' peeked in thru' the winder, 
 An* there sot Huldy all alone, 
 'ith no one nigh to hender. . . 
 
 The very room, coz she was in, 
 Seemed warm from floor to ceilin' ; 
 An she looked ful ez rosy agin 
 Es the apples she was peelin'. . , 
 
 She heered a foot, an* knowed it tu, 
 
 A-raspin' on the scraper, 
 
 All ways to once her feelins flew 
 
 Like sparks in burnt-up paper." The Courtirt, 
 
 " Here, 
 
 The scissors-grinder, pausing, doffs his hat, , 
 
 And lets the kind breeze, with its delicate fan, 
 Winnow the heat from out his dank gray hair, 
 A grimy Ulysses, a much-wandered man, 
 Whose feet are known to all the populous ways, 
 And many men and manners he hath seen, 
 Not without fruit of solitary thought." 
 
 Under the Willows. 
 
 " Here, sometimes, in this paradise of shade, 
 Rippled with western winds, the dusty Tramp, 
 Seeing the treeless causey burn beyond, 
 Halts to unroll his bundle of strange food 
 And munch an unearned meal. 
 
6O8 LOWELL 
 
 I bait him with my match-box and my pouch, 
 
 Nor grudge the uncostly sympathy of smoke, 
 
 His equal now, divinely unemployed. 
 
 Some smack of Robin Hood is in the man, 
 
 Some secret league with wild wood-wandering things ; 
 
 He is our ragged Duke, our barefoot Earl, 
 
 By right of birth exonerate from toil, 
 
 Who levies rent from us his tenants all, 
 
 And serves the state by merely being." 
 
 Under the Willows. 
 
 II. Knowledge of and Faith in Human Nature. 
 
 " Man is the great object of Lowell's song, because the 
 world must be advanced to attain the full stature of great- 
 ness. . . . His ethical code is healthful and refreshing ; 
 he analyses human nature with all the magical power, if also 
 with the tenderness, of the skilfullest of soul-physicians. He 
 is the best of metaphysicians, because his conclusions are 
 based, not upon theory, but upon heart-throbs of that human- 
 ity whose soul he endeavors to pierce. . . . His knowl- 
 edge of human nature is very profound." G. B. Smith. 
 
 11 Next to his deep love of God is our poet's love of man. 
 It is the love of the man in all men, of the womanly in every 
 woman the true enthusiasm of humanity which 
 
 4 Sees beneath the foulest faces lurking 
 One God-built shrine of reverence and love.' " 
 
 H. R. Haweis. 
 
 "With all the faith he had in his own people of the past, 
 he looked forward to the new race which is yet forming in our 
 womb, and nowhere in our literature is there more direct ex- 
 pression of the national faith in mere manhood than in a few 
 great lines of these patriotic poems, or, more soberly and ex- 
 plicitly, in the essay upon Democracy." G. E. Woodberry. 
 " There was another phase of Lowell's teaching which was 
 not less helpful, and that was his inexhaustible faith in the in- 
 extinguishable spark of God ' in the human heart." W. T. 
 Stead. 
 
LOWELL 609 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I often wonder what the Mountain thinks 
 Of French boots creaking o'er his breathless brinks, 
 Or how the Sun would scare the chattering crowd, 
 If some fine day he chanced to think aloud. 
 I, who love Nature much as sinners can, 
 Love her where she most grandeur shows, in man : 
 Here I find mountain, forest, cloud, and sun, 
 River and sea, and glows when day is done ; 
 Nay, where she makes grotesques, and moulds in jest 
 The clown's cheap clay, I find unfading zest. 
 The natural instincts year by year retire, 
 As deer shrink northward from the settler's fire, 
 And he who loves the wild game-flavor more 
 Than city feasts, where every man's a bore 
 To every other man, must seek it where 
 The steamer's throb and railway's iron blare 
 Have not yet startled with their punctual stir 
 The shy, wood-wandering brood of Character." 
 
 Fitz Adairfs Story. 
 
 " And sees, beneath the foulest faces lurking, 
 One God-built shrine of reverence and love; 
 
 Who feels that God and Heaven's great deeps are nearer 
 Him to whose heart his fellow-man is nigh, 
 Who doth not hold his soul's own freedom dearer 
 Than that of all his brethren, low or high." Ode. 
 
 " Good never comes unmixed, or so it seems, 
 Having two faces, as some images 
 Are carved, of foolish gods ; one face is ill ; 
 But one heart lies beneath, and that is good, 
 As are all hearts, when we explore their depths. 
 Therefore, great heart, bear up ! thou art but type 
 Of what all lofty spirits endure, that fain 
 Would win men back to strength and peace through love : 
 Each hath his lonely peak, and on each heart 
 39 
 
6lO LOWELL 
 
 Envy, or scorn, or hatred, tears life-long 
 With vulture beak ; yet the high soul is left ; 
 And faith, which is but hope grown wise, and love, 
 And patience which at last shall overcome." 
 
 Prometheus. 
 
 12. Sectionalism Nationalism. Quite as much as 
 Whittier, though in another way, Lowell proclaims himself a 
 son of New England and of America. He gloried in being 
 an American. It has been justly said of him that " he did 
 more than any other man to command respect for our institu- 
 tions " in the minds of all Europeans. During his later years 
 Lowell was charged by that class of pseudo-statesmen against 
 whom he had directed some of his keenest darts, with being 
 un-American. Never was a more baseless slander uttered. In 
 a recently-published letter addressed to his friend, Joel Ben- 
 ton, and bearing date of January, 1876, Lowell indignantly, 
 exclaims: "These fellows have no notion of what love of 
 country means. It is in my very blood and bones. If I am 
 not an American, who ever was? I am no pessimist, nor ever 
 was. . . . What fills me with doubt and dismay is the 
 degradation of the moral tone. Is it, or is it not, a result of 
 Democracy? Is ours a government of the people, by the 
 people, for the people, or a Kakistocracy rather, for the bene- 
 fit of knaves at the cost of fools? Democracy is, after all, 
 nothing more than an experiment, like another ; and I know 
 only one way of judging it by its results. Democracy in 
 itself is no more sacred than monarchy. It is man who 
 is sacred. ... It is honor, justice, culture that make 
 liberty invaluable. . . . Forgive me for this long letter 
 of justification, which I am willing to write for your friendly 
 eye, though I should scorn to make any public defence. Let 
 the tenor of my life and writings defend me." 
 
 "He is an American of the Americans, alive to the idea 
 and movement of the whole country, singularly independent 
 in his tests of its men and products from whatever section or 
 
LOWELL 6ll 
 
 in however unpromising a form they chance to appear. . . . 
 He seems to represent New England more variously than 
 either of his comrades. We find in his work, as in theirs, her 
 loyalty and moral purpose. She has been at cost for his train- 
 ing, and he in turn has read her heart, honoring her as a 
 mother before the world and seeing beauty in her common 
 garb and speech. . . . To him the Eastern States are 
 what the fathers, as he has said, desired to found no new 
 Jerusalem but a New England and, if it might be, a better 
 one. His poetry has the strength, the tenderness, and the 
 defects of the down-East temper." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Lowell was an intense New Englander. There is no finer 
 figure of the higher Puritan type. The New England soil, 
 from which he sprang, was precious to him. The New England 
 legend, the New England language, New England character 
 and achievement, were all his delight and familiar study. 
 Burns did not give to the Scottish tongue a nobler 
 immortality than Lowell gave to the dialect of New England. 
 Literature was his pursuit, but patriotism was his 
 passion. His love of country was that of a lover for his 
 mistress. . . . Nowhere in literature is there a more 
 magnificent and majestic personification of a country whose 
 name is sacred to its children, nowhere a profounder passion 
 of patriotic loyalty, than the closing lines of the ' Com- 
 memoration Ode.' The American whose heart, swayed by 
 that lofty music, does not thrill and palpitate with solemn 
 joy and high resolve, does not yet know what it is to be an 
 American. Nobody who could adequately depict the Yankee 
 ever knew him as Lowell knew him, for he was at heart the 
 Yankee that he drew. . . . The <Bi glow Papers' are dis- 
 tinctively American. . . . They could have been written 
 nowhere else but in Yankee New England by a New England 
 Yankee." George William Curtis. 
 
 " His America was a country worth hearing about, a mag- 
 nificent conception, an admirably consistent and lovable ob- 
 
6l2 LOWELL 
 
 ject of allegiance. If the sign that in Europe one knew him 
 best by was his intense national consciousness, one felt that 
 this consciousness could not sit lightly on a man in whom it 
 was the strongest form of piety. . . . New England 
 was heroic, for he felt in his pulses the whole history of 
 her origines. . . . One felt in his patriotism the depth 
 of passion that hums through much of his finest verse 
 almost the only passion that, to my sense, his poetry 
 contains the accent of chivalry, of the lover, the knight 
 ready to do battle for his mistress. Above all, it was a partic- 
 ular allegiance to New England ; ... it was impossible 
 to know him without a sense that he had a rare divination of 
 the hard realities of her past." Henry James. 
 
 " In the poet's writing we find the life and passion of New 
 England to a verity and the best thought of our people 
 at large. . . . Lowell will chiefly be remembered as 
 poet because of his New England heart and voice his idyls 
 of the Junes and Decembers of Massachusetts and his verse of 
 anti-slavery and patriotism." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 "The elementary fact about Lowell, which stands at the 
 threshold of every discussion of his works, is that he was born 
 and bred a New Englander. It is a fact which he himself 
 does not permit his readers to forget. In his prose and in his 
 verse he goes back to it again and again. Literature will 
 know him longest, not as the critic nor as the writer of elegies, 
 lyrics, and odes, but as the poet who gave literary form and 
 value to the indigenous humor, rhetoric, and satire of the 
 farmers of New England." Sidney Low. 
 
 " If there was one quality more than another that summed 
 up Lowell's characteristics, it was his Americanism. 
 Longfellow and Bryant are essentially English, modified 
 slightly by their American environment." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
LOWELL 613 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I first drew in New England's air, and from her hearty breast 
 Sucked in the tyrant-hating milk that will not let me rest ; 
 And if my words seem treason to the dullard and the tame, 
 'Tis but my Bay-state dialect our fathers spoke the same." 
 
 " O Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
 Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
 O'er such sweet brows as never others wore, 
 And letting thy set lips, 
 Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
 The rosy edges of their smile lay bare ; 
 What words divine of lover or of poet 
 Could tell our love and make thee know it, 
 Among the nations bright beyond compare ? " 
 
 Commemoration Ode. 
 
 " For, O, my country, touched by thee, 
 The gray hairs gather back their gold ; 
 Thy thought sets all my pulses free ; 
 The heart refuses to be old ; 
 The love is all that I can see. 
 Not to thy natal day belong 
 Time's prudent doubt or age's wrong, 
 But gifts of gratitude and song : 
 Unsummoned crowd the thankful words, 
 As sap in spring-time floods the tree, 
 Foreboding the return of birds, 
 For all that thou hast been to me ! " 
 
 An Ode for the Fourth of July. 
 
 13. Melody Classical Finish. "The public was 
 right in its liking for 'The Changeling,' ' She Came and 
 Went,' and ' The First Snow-Fall, ' than which there are few 
 more touching lyrics of the affections. . . . The public 
 keeps in store for him the adage of the wilful songster. That 
 he can sing was discovered at the outset. . . . He is all 
 
6 14 LOWELL 
 
 poet, and the blithest, most unstudied songster on the old 
 Bay Shore. . . . Especially in his shorter lyrics, there is 
 a perfect melody, real music, which has a charm apart from 
 the meaning of the verse." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "These poems [on Garrison, Phillips, etc.], especially that 
 on ' The Present Crisis,' have a Tyrtean resonance, a stately 
 rhetorical rhythm, that make their dignity of thought, their 
 intense feeling and picturesque imagery, superbly effective in 
 recitation." George William Curtis. 
 
 "The terseness, ease, and finish of these lines [Lowell's 
 shorter lyrics], in which compliment blends with the wisdom 
 of life, and the whole is subdued within the range of personal 
 talk from friend to friend, are qualities unique in our poetry, 
 and recall the modes of utterance of a more polished, lettered 
 age, when intellect and manners held their own beside emo- 
 tion, and the literary life was more complete in manly pow- 
 ers." . E. Woodberry. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I saw the twinkle of white feet, 
 
 I saw the flash of robes descending ; 
 Before her ran an influence fleet, 
 
 That bowed my heart like barley bending. . . . 
 
 Coy Hebe flies from those that woo, 
 
 And shuns the hands would seize upon her ; 
 
 Follow thy life, and she will sue 
 To pour for thee the cup of honor." Hebe. 
 
 " In the twilight deep and silent 
 Comes thy spirit unto mine, 
 When the moonlight and the starlight 
 Over cliff and woodland shine, 
 And the quiver of the rive'r 
 Seems a thrill of joy benign." Reverie. 
 
LOWELL 
 
 " All things are sad : 
 I go and ask of Memory, 
 That she tell sweet tales to me 
 To make me glad ; 
 And she takes me by the hand, 
 Leadeth to old places, 
 Showeth the old faces 
 In her hazy mirage-land ; 
 Oh, her voice is sweet and low, 
 And her eyes are fresh to mine 
 As the dew 
 Gleaming through 
 The half-unfolded Eglantine, 
 Long ago, long ago ! 
 But I feel that I am only 
 Yet more sad and yet more lonely ! " Song. 
 
 6i 5 
 
LONGFELLOW, 1807-1882 
 
 Biographical Outline. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 
 born in Portland, Mass, (afterward Maine), February 27, 
 1807, of parents descended on both sides from English an- 
 cestry ; father a lawyer of high standing, a Harvard classmate 
 of Channing and Judge Story, and at one time a member of 
 Congress ; Longfellow had four brothers and four sisters ; as a 
 boy he manifests the gentleness so characteristic of his poems, 
 disliking violent games, noises, etc. ; he has early access to 
 the best English classics, and is especially fond of Cowper, 
 Ossian, and Washington Irving ; he is reared strictly, although 
 he goes, with his family and church, into the earlier forms of 
 Unitarianism and, as a young man, takes singing and dancing 
 lessons ; he enters a private school at the age of five, but soon 
 withdraws, disgusted with the companionship of rough boys ; at 
 six he enters the Portland Academy, and is " half through his 
 Latin grammar" before he is seven ; among his teachers at 
 the school was Jacob Abbott ; as a boy Longfellow is hand- 
 some, frank, and retiring ; his school vacations are spent on 
 the farm of his grandfather, Judge Longfellow, at Graham 
 Corners, near Portland, and at Hiram, where his maternal 
 grandfather, General Wadsworth, of Revolutionary fame, and 
 also a Harvard graduate, had an estate of 7,000 acres ; Long- 
 fellow's first published poem, " The Battle of Lovell's Pond," 
 commemorating an Indian fight at a pond near Hiram, ap- 
 pears anonymously in the Portland Gazette, November 20, 
 1820 (the lines on "Mr. Finney and his Turnip," once so 
 widely published as Longfellow's first poem, are not his) ; 
 about this time he forms a literary partnership with a boy 
 named William Browne, and together they write plays, epi- 
 
 616 
 
.ONGFELLOW 6i; 
 
 grams, and "tragedies;" Longfellow's youthful feelings and 
 experiences are afterward expressed in the poem "My Lost 
 Youth." 
 
 Longfellow enters Bowdoin College, of which his father was 
 a trustee, in 1821, but does the work of Freshman year at 
 home, and begins his residence at Brunswick in 1822, rooming 
 with his elder brother in the house where Mrs. Stowe after- 
 ward wrote " Uncle Tom's Cabin;" in college Longfellow 
 maintains a high rank, and is noted for his refined manners 
 and happy temperament ; he confesses that he " cares little 
 about politics or anything of the kind ; " in the winter vaca- 
 tion of 1823-24 he visits Boston and dances at " a splendid 
 ball" given at Cambridge in honor of the Russian Consul; 
 while in college he contributes to a Portland journal several 
 poems not thought worth reprinting and to the American 
 Monthly Magazine several prose articles ; in November, 1824, 
 he publishes in the U. S. Military Gazette a poem entitled 
 "Thanksgiving," which shows plainly the influence of Bry- 
 ant, who was then contributing to the same periodical ; dur- 
 ing 1825 Longfellow publishes in the Gazette sixteen poems, 
 of which five were reprinted in "Voices of the Night," his 
 first volume of poems ; he also contributes to the Gazette three 
 prose essays; at this time, when Longfellow was only seven- 
 teen, his name was " honorably mentioned " in the Galaxy 
 with those of Bryant (then already famous) and Percival, and 
 Longfellow's poem "Autumnal Nightfall" was attributed to 
 Bryant; in March, 1824, he writes to his father : "I am 
 anxious to know what you intend to make of me. . . . 
 I hardly think nature intended me for the bar, the pulpit, or 
 the dissecting-room. I am altogether in favor of the farmer's 
 life ; " while at Bowdoin he unites with five fellow -students in 
 forming a Unitarian club, and disseminates Unitarian tracts ; 
 as early as December, 1824, he proposes to his father to allow 
 him to spend a year at Harvard after graduation, where he 
 means to study history, literature, and Italian, and after which 
 
6l8 LONGFELLOW 
 
 he proposes to attach himself to some literary journal as' a 
 means of livelihood ; he adds: "The fact is, I most eagerly 
 aspire after future eminence in literature. My whole soul 
 burns most ardently for it, and every earthly thought centres 
 in it. . . . I will be eminent in something; " at gradu- 
 ation, in September, 1825, he stands fourth in a class of thirty- 
 eight ; immediately after Commencement he is offered the 
 newly established chair of modern languages at Bowdoin, on 
 the condition that he visit Europe to prepare himself for the 
 place ; he remains at Portland, awaiting mild weather for his 
 ocean voyage, till May, 1826, meantime reading a little 
 Blackstone in his father's office, but devoting most of his time 
 to writing ; during this winter he writes " Autumn," " Mus- 
 ings," "The Burial of the Minnesink," and " The Song of 
 the Birds ; " he starts for Europe by way of Boston, North- 
 ampton, Albany, and New York early in May, 1826 ; at 
 Northampton Dr. Channing gives him letters to Irving, 
 Southey, and Professor Eichorn of Gottingen ; he reaches 
 Havre June i5th, after a month's voyage, and journeys by dili- 
 gence to Paris, where he remains till February, 1827, spending 
 the warm months of the summer at Auteuil and making a 
 pedestrian tour along the Loire and Cher through Orleans, 
 Tivher, Blois, Amboise, Tours, Vendorae, and Chartres ; at 
 Paris he meets Cooper and Sidney Smith ; he leaves Paris for 
 Madrid late in February, 1827, travelling by way of Bordeaux, 
 Bayonne, Tolosa, and Burgos ; at Madrid he comes into close 
 social relations with Alexander Everett, then American Min- 
 ister to Spain, and with Washington Irving, then writing his 
 " Life of Columbus ; " Longfellow visits Segovia and the Es- 
 corial ; he studies Spanish industriously, refusing to return to 
 America " a mere charlatan," saying, " though I might deceive 
 others as to the extent of my knowledge, I cannot so easily 
 deceive myself; " in September, 1827, he leaves Madrid for 
 Italy, travelling by way of Cordova, Seville, Cadiz, Gibraltar, 
 Malaga, Granada, Marseilles, Toulon, Nice, Genoa, and Pisa 
 
LONGFELLOW 619 
 
 to Florence, where he remains several weeks and sees much 
 brilliant society ; he spends the spring and early summer of 
 1828 in Naples and Rome, and is dangerously ill at Rome in 
 July ; he convalesces at Arricia, returns to Rome, and remains 
 till December, and then goes to Dresden by way of Venice, 
 Verona, Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, Trieste, Vienna, and 
 Prague ; meantime he learns that the trustees of Bowdoin have 
 withdrawn their offer of a professorship because of a lack of 
 funds, and have offered him instead an instructorship, which 
 he promptly declines ; by this time (December, 1828) he 
 has acquired a fluent command of French, Spanish, Portuguese, 
 and Italian ; he reaches Dresden late in December, and settles 
 down to the study of German, greatly aided socially by letters 
 of introduction from Irving ; late in February he goes to Got- 
 tingen to join his friend Preble ; in March, 1829, he writes 
 to his sister: "My poetic career is finished. Since I left 
 home I have hardly put two lines together; " in the spring 
 of 1829 he takes a vacation in England, and returns through 
 Holland to Gottingen and his German studies ; in May, 1829, 
 he begins to write " a kind of sketch-book of scenes in France. 
 Spain, and Italy; " he is recalled in June, 1829, by the danger- 
 ous illness of his sister and by the refusal of his father to sup- 
 ply funds for a longer European residence ; he reaches New 
 York August n, 1829, after the death of his sister Elizabeth. 
 After again refusing a proffered instructorship at Bowdoin, 
 he is elected, September i, 1829, professor of modern lan- 
 guages at a salary of $800 a year, and is also made librarian 
 with an additional salary of $100 ; he takes up his work at 
 once, and begins by translating for his pupils a small French 
 grammar and editing a collection of French proverbs and a 
 Spanish reader ; at the Commencement of 1830 he delivers his 
 inaugural address on the origin and growth of the languages and 
 literature of Southern Europe ; in 1831 he begins to contribute 
 to the North American Review, then edited by his friend 
 Alexander Everett; in September, 1831, he marries Mary 
 
620 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Storer Potter, the daughter of a Portland neighbor ; he reads 
 the Phi Beta Kappa poem at Bowdoin in September, 1832, and 
 repeats it by request at Harvard in 1833, in connection with 
 an oration by Edward Everett ; he publishes the first five 
 sketches of " Outre Mer" in the New England Magazine 
 under the title of " The Schoolmaster ; " the first two sketches 
 of " Outre Mer" are published anonymously in pamphlet 
 form in Boston in 1833; Longfellow's first published book, 
 however, was a translation from the Spanish of Don Jorge 
 Manrique, Lope de Vega, and others; in December, 1834, he 
 is appointed to succeed George Ticknor as Smith Professor of 
 modern languages at Harvard, with the privilege of a year and 
 a half in Europe at his own expense before taking the chair. 
 
 He sails for Europe with his wife in April, 1835, first ar- 
 ranging for the publication of" Outre Mer" in two volumes ; 
 in London he meets the Carlyles ; thence, in the summer, by 
 way of Hamburg to Copenhagen and Stockholm, where he 
 studies Swedish, Finnish, and Danish ; he is detained at Am- 
 sterdam on his way to Germany by his wife's illness, arid 
 devotes a month to the study of Dutch ; his wife dies at Rot- 
 terdam, November 29, 1835 ; Longfellow pushes on to 
 Heidelberg, where he settles down to the study of German, 
 and where he first meets Bryant, then residing in Heidelberg 
 with his family; in June, 1836, Longfellow goes to Switzer- 
 land by way of Munich, Milan, and the Simplon ; he spends 
 two months travelling about Switzerland, leaves Heidelberg 
 for Paris late in August, 1836, and sails for America early in 
 October ; in December, 1836, he takes up his work as a pro- 
 fessor at Harvard, and soon enters upon his life-long intimacy 
 with Charles Sumner, who was then lecturing in the Harvard 
 Law School ; in March, 1837, he begins his long correspond- 
 ence with Hawthorne, and soon afterward really introduces 
 Hawthorne to the literary world by writing for the North 
 American Review a favorable criticism on "Twice Told 
 Tales;" in May, 1837, he takes lodgings in Craigie House 
 
LONGFELLOW 621 
 
 (once Washington's head -quarters), where he resides during 
 the rest of his life; here, from 1837 to 1845, Longfellow 
 writes many poems, and submits them to his intimate friends, 
 Felton, Sumner, and Hillard; the "Psalm of Life" was 
 written here July 26, 1838, and appeared in the Knicker- 
 bocker Magazine in the following October, attracting much 
 attention. 
 
 In August, 1838, Longfellow described his daily routine as 
 follows : "I smoke a good deal, wear a broad -brimmed 
 black hat, molest no one, and dine out frequently. In win- 
 ter I go much into Boston society;" he begins writing 
 " Hyperion " November 27, 1838, and writes " The Reaper 
 and the Flowers" on the 6th of the following December, 
 " with peace in my heart and not a few tears in my eyes ; " he 
 publishes " Hyperion "in two volumes in the summer of 1829, 
 and his first volume of poems, " Voices of the Night," late 
 in- the autumn of the same year ; he receives $375 in notes for 
 the manuscript of ' ' Hyperion ; " the heroine of ' ' Hyperion ' ' 
 is a true portraiture of the lady who afterward became Mrs. 
 Longfellow ; in March, 1839, the poet writes : " I have three 
 lectures a week and recitations without number. I go into my 
 recitation-room between seven and eight and come out be- 
 tween three and four, with one hour's intermission;" he 
 writes "The Wreck of the Hesperus" October 30, 1839; 
 during this period of his life he is in very close touch with 
 Sumner, Hillard, Felton, Hawthorne, and Prescott, dining 
 with them very often, and often entertaining them at his 
 rooms in Craigie House ; in January, 1831, Longfellow gives 
 three lectures on Dante before the Mercantile Library Associ- 
 ation of New York ; " Voices of the Night " passes through 
 six editions during its first two years ; " The Skeleton in 
 Armor " appears in the Knickerbocker Magazine in January, 
 1841 ; by the summer of 1841 Longfellow has become so 
 famous that, while on a visit to Philadelphia with Sumner, he 
 is "lionized" till he finds it a bore; in October, 1841, he 
 
622 LONGFELLOW 
 
 writes "Excelsior" and "God's Acre," and begins "The 
 Children of the Lord's Supper;" in the following month 
 he writes " Blind Bartimeus ; " about this time he begins also 
 his "Golden Legend," of which the first part was not published 
 till 1851 and the whole (the trilogy called "Christus") not 
 till 1873 ; in December, 1841, he publishes his second 
 volume of verse under the title " Ballads and Other Poems." 
 In the spring of 1842, being in poor health, Longfellow 
 obtains a leave of absence for six months, and sails for Ger- 
 many, with the intention of seeking health at a water-cure 
 near Boppard ; here he meets the young German poet Freili- 
 grath, with whom Longfellow forms a close friendship, which 
 lasts through life ; he also makes brief visits to Paris, Antwerp, 
 and Bruges, and while at Bruges gains inspiration for the 
 " Belfry " poems, published a year or two later ; he returns to 
 America by way of Heidelberg, Nuremberg, Cologne, Ostend, 
 and London, where he is royally welcomed by Dickens, and 
 becomes the novelist's guest at Broadstairs, in Kent ; Long- 
 fellow reaches Cambridge in November, 1842, much improved 
 in health, and soon after his return publishes a small pam- 
 phlet of poems on slavery, most of which were written during 
 the homeward voyage ; the " Ballads " reaches a fifth edition 
 by the summer of 1843 ; in July, 1843, Longfellow marries 
 Miss Frances E. Appleton, daughter of a prominent Boston 
 merchant, a lady whom he had met in Switzerland six years 
 before and had immortalized in " Hyperion ; " while on his 
 wedding journey to "the old-fashioned country seat " near 
 Pittsfield, Mass., Longfellow sees "the old clock on the 
 stairs ; " they return in the autumn to Craigie House, which 
 Mrs. Longfellow's father buys for them, together with a plot of 
 land across the street, to give them an uninterrupted view of 
 the Charles River ; during this autumn he edits two large vol- 
 umes on the Poets and Poetry of Europe, but in doing this work 
 so strains his eyes that for many years he is unable to use them 
 except in the daytime and then for but short intervals ; he also 
 
LONGFELLOW 623 
 
 begins to translate Dante about this time ; in a letter to Whit- 
 tier in 1844 he declines a nomination to Congress, saying : 
 " I rejoice in freedom from slavery of all kinds, but I cannot 
 for a moment think of entering the political arena ; " during 
 1845 he writes several short poems, including "The Old 
 Clock on the Stairs," " To a Child," " The Bridge," " Birds 
 of Passage," and "The Arrow and the Song," and begins 
 " Evangeline," which he at first calls " Gabrielle ; " late in 
 1845 ne publishes an illustrated volume containing the short 
 poems just named, with others already published, and wins 
 high praise from Bryant; in February, 1846, he publishes a 
 cheap two-volume edition of his poems, and revises ' Outre 
 Mer ; " he writes " The Builders " during the following May ; 
 by July, 1846, 12,000 copies of " Voices of the Night " had 
 been sold; Longfellow writes "Pegasus in Pound" in De- 
 cember, 1846, and uses it as a prologue to " The Estray," 
 published during the same month ; he finishes " Evangeline " 
 February 27, 1847, and at once begins his prose romance 
 " Kavanagh ;" he revises "Evangeline" at Oak Grove, 
 near Portland, during the summer vacation, and publishes it 
 October 30, 1847 ; there is much hostile criticism of the hex- 
 ameter; the story on which " Evangeline " is based had first 
 been suggested to Hawthorne by a Boston clergyman, but 
 Hawthorne declined it for a romance and gave it to Longfel- 
 low; much of " Evangeline " was first written with a pencil in 
 the dark, to save the author's eyes, and was afterward copied 
 out ; 6,000 copies were sold within six months of publica- 
 tion ; Longfellow is much depressed by the death of his little 
 daughter, Fannie, August n, 1848 ; he finishes " Kavanagh " 
 November 9, 1848, and publishes it May 13, 1849; he be- 
 gins " The Building of the Ship " June 18, 1849, and pub- 
 lishes it in a collection of his poems called " Seaside and 
 Fireside" in the following November, receiving $1,000 for 
 the first edition ; this volume contained " Resignation " and 
 " The Fire of Driftwood." 
 
624 LONGFELLOW 
 
 In 1850 Longfellow again takes up " Christus," saying in his 
 journal : " Now I long to try a loftier strain in sublimer song, 
 whose broken melodies have for so many years breathed through 
 my soul in the better hours of life ; " he writes several cantos 
 of "The Golden Legend" during the winter of 1850, and 
 hears Fanny Kemble read "The Building of the Ship " be- 
 fore 3,000 Bostonians ; in the spring of 1850, with his 
 family, he visits New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, 
 meeting Bryant, Webster, and Henry Clay ; he spends the 
 summer of 1850 at Nahant, where he lives every summer there- 
 after for many years, and meets there Whittier and the Carey 
 sisters ; he finishes " The Golden Legend " in March, 1851, 
 and it is published in the following December, and sells at 
 first at the rate of two hundred copies a day; during 1852 
 he entertains many eminent people, including Jenny Lind 
 and Kossuth ; he begins his translation of Dante's " Purga- 
 torio " in February, 1853, and gives in the following June a 
 farewell dinner to Hawthorne, then just starting to take his 
 consulship at Liverpool; he calls 1853 " the most unproduc- 
 tive year of my life ; " late in March, 1854, on the occasion 
 of the birth of his daughter simultaneously with the death of 
 Lowell's wife, Longfellow writes "The Two Angels;" on 
 April 19, 1854, he delivers at Harvard what he calls "my 
 last lecture the last I shall ever deliver anywhere;" in 
 May, 1854, he writes "Prometheus and Epimetheus " and 
 " The Rope-walk ; " he begins " Hiawatha " in June of this 
 year, and works at it during his annual summer residence at 
 Nahant ; his resignation of the professorship of modern lan- 
 guages at Harvard, which he had talked of making for years, 
 is accepted September n, 1854, and thus ends his life 
 of eighteen years as a teacher ; like Lowell, he had felt 
 " the yoke" for years, and had worried because his teach- 
 ing, his social and family duties, and his correspondence 
 left him so little time for writing; late in January, 1855, 
 Lowell is elected his successor at Harvard ; Longfellow fin- 
 
LONGFELLOW 625 
 
 >hes "Hiawatha" March 21, 1855, and writes " My Lost 
 Youth " nine days later ; " Hiawatha " is published Novem- 
 ber 10, 1855, and the first edition of 5,000 copies is sold in 
 advance (Longfellow kept the copyright of his books in his 
 own hands) ; over 11,000 copies of " Hiawatha " were sold in 
 England during the first month ; in the autumn and winter of 
 1855-56 Longfellow entertains Ole Bull, Thackeray, and T. 
 B. Reed ; be begins "The Courtship of Miles Standish " De- 
 cember 2, 1856 ; by March 31, 1857, the sales of his books 
 in America had reached the following aggregates: "Voices 
 of the Night," 43,550 copies; "Ballads," etc., 40,470; 
 "The Spanish Student," 38,400; "The Belfry of Bruges," 
 38,300; " Evangeline," 38,550; "Hiawatha," 50,000; 
 " Outre Mer," 7,500; " Hyperion," 14,550; " Kavanagh," 
 10,500. 
 
 In December, 1857, Longfellow unites with Lowell, Mot- 
 ley, Emerson, Holmes, Cabot, and Underwood in establish- 
 ing the Atlantic Monthly ; he finishes " Sandalphon " January 
 18, 1858, and publishes it sqon afterward ; " The Courtship 
 of Miles Standish " is finished March 22, 1858, and is pub- 
 lished in the following October, reaching a sale of 25,000 
 copies during its first week, while 10,000 copies are sold in 
 London the first day after its appearance ; in the summer ot 
 1859 Longfellow receives the degree of LL.D. from Harvard ; 
 on April 6, 1860, he visits the spire of the Old North Church 
 in Boston, and on the iQth he writes " Paul Revere's Ride; " 
 during the following October he assists in entertaining the 
 Prince of Wales ; in November he sits for Darley's famous 
 picture, " Washington Irving and his Friends," and writes 
 "The Saga of King Olaf ; " on July 9, 1861, Mrs. Longfel- 
 low's dress catches fire, and she dies the next day from the 
 burns and the shock ; Longfellow is so affected that, during 
 the remaining twenty-one years of his life, he can never write 
 or speak of his loss ; but after his death his beautiful sonnet on 
 
 40 
 
626 LONGFELLOW 
 
 1879, is found among his papers; Longfellow himself was 
 severely burned while trying to save his wife ; late in 1861 he 
 seeks relief from his sorrow by taking up his translation of 
 Dante, begun and laid aside years before ; for a time he trans- 
 lates a canto a day; in June, 1862, with a party of friends, 
 he visits Niagara, s'topping two days at Trenton Falls ; from 
 Niagara the party go to Montreal by way of the Thousand 
 Islands and the Rapids, and thence home by way of Burling- 
 ton ; in October, 1862, with Fields, he visits the old Red 
 Horse Tavern in Sudbury, Mass., and begins the " Tales of a 
 Wayside Inn ; " he finishes the first draft of his Dante transla- 
 tion April 1 6, 1863, having written " a canto a day for thirty- 
 four days in succession," and begins making notes for the 
 same; the "Tales of a Wayside Inn" (first called " The 
 Sudbury Tales") is published November 25, 1863 (in the 
 " Tales" the poet is T. W. Parsons; the Sicilian, Luigi 
 Monti ; the theologian, Professor Treadwell ; and the student, 
 Henry Ware Wales. Of these, the first three used to spend 
 their summers at the Inn) ; earjly in 1864 Longfellow revises 
 " Hyperion " for a new edition, and writes several of his 
 " Birds of Passage; " on May 23d he attends the funeral of 
 Hawthorne, and soon afterward writes his poem on Haw- 
 thorne ; the first volume of the Dante translation appears in 
 February, 1865, and a special copy is forwarded to the Italian 
 Minister in time for the sexcentennial anniversary ceremonies 
 in honor of the Italian poet ; all three volumes of the Dante 
 translation are very carefully scrutinized by Lowell and Charles 
 Eliot Norton, both meeting Longfellow one evening a week, 
 as "The Dante Club," and going very carefully over every 
 word and construction ; in November, 1865, Longfellow 
 gives a dinner to Mr. Burlingame, our Minister to China, in 
 honor of the reception of a Chinese fan, on which some " ce- 
 lestial " poet had written "The Psalm of Life " in Chinese 
 characters; Longfellow completes the "long labor" of the 
 notes to Dante and the revision January i, 1867 ; his sixtieth 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 birthday, February 27, 1867, is celebrated with a poetical 
 tribute from Lowell ; early in the following May Longfellow 
 sails on his fourth and last visit to Europe, in company with 
 his second son, his son's bride, Longfellow's three young 
 daughters, his two sisters, a brother, and Mr. ''Tom " Apple- 
 ton ; the party visit the Lake district and go thence to Cam- 
 bridge, where Longfellow receives the degree of LL.D. ; thence 
 to London, where the poet is overwhelmed with public and 
 private honors by many eminent people, including Gladstone, 
 Dean Stanley, and the Prince of Wales and Queen Victoria, 
 on both of whom he calls by special invitation; Longfellow 
 also revisits Dickens at Gad's Hill, and spends two days with 
 Tennyson on the Isle of Wight ; the party go thence to the 
 Continent and up the Rhine to Switzerland, where they spend 
 the summer ; they spend the autumn in Paris and the winter 
 in Rome and Naples ; returning in the spring of 1869 by way 
 of Munich and Nuremberg, they stop briefly in England and 
 Scotland, and at Oxford Longfellow receives the degree of 
 D.C.L. ; he returns to Cambridge September i, 1869. 
 
 The death of Hawthorne, Felton, and Sumner, and the ab- 
 sence of Aggassiz and Lowell sadden the poet's latest years, 
 though he still keeps up his companionship with Norton, 
 Holmes, and Emerson, and entertains many noted Europeans at 
 Craigie House ; in January, 1870, he begins the second series 
 of " Tales of a Wayside Inn," and in the following May he 
 prepares a supplement to his " Poets and Poetry of Europe," 
 adding several new translations of his own ; in November, 
 1870, he takes up his long contemplated " divine tragedy " 
 of " Christus," which is published in December, 1871 ; late 
 in 1871 he writes "Judas Maccabeus" on a theme contem- 
 plated for twenty years but treated in twelve days ; early in 
 1872 he writes " Michael Angelo " in sixteen days, but this 
 poem is not published till after his death ; in the spring of 
 1872 he publishes " Three Books of Song," being the second 
 part of " Tales of a Wayside Inn," " Judas Maccabeus," and 
 
628 LONGFELLOW 
 
 "A Handful of Translations; " in the autumn of 1872 the 
 " Christus " appears, making, with the notes, interludes, etc., 
 a large volume ; after its appearance " The Golden Legend " 
 is withdrawn as a separate work ; on his sixty-sixth birthday, 
 February 27, 1873, Longfellow publishes the third " day " of 
 the (l Tales of a Wayside Inn," and soon afterward repub- 
 lishes it in a small volume with several lyrics, under the title 
 " Aftermath ; " he completes " The Hanging of the Crane " 
 January 4, 1874, and Robert Bonner pays him $3,000 for the 
 use of the poem in the New York Ledger; in 1875 "The 
 Hanging of the Crane " is published in a volume with several 
 other poems, under the title " Pandora's Box; " this volume 
 contained, also, " Morituri Salutamus" written at the re- 
 quest of the poet's class of 1825 and delivered at the Bowdoin 
 Commencement of 1875 ; in August, 1877, he receives from 
 the Harpers $1,000 for "Keramos," which is published in 
 1878, with Longfellow's tributes to Lowell, Tennyson, Whit- 
 tier, and others, in a volume called "Keramos; " he con- 
 tinues to pass his summers at Nahant, with always a week at 
 his boyhood home in Portland ; in 1879, on his seventy-sec- 
 ond birthday, he is presented by the school-children of Cam- 
 bridge with a chair made from the wood of the * ' spreading 
 chestnut-tree " under which "the village smithy " formerly 
 stood ; late in the same year he writes his poem on Burns, 
 which appears in 1880 with seventeen other short poems in 
 a thin volume called " Ultima Thule ;" in 1880 the poet's 
 birthday is widely celebrated by the school-children through- 
 out the country ; he writes his sonnet " My Books," Decem- 
 ber 26, 1882, and in the following January the poem " Mad 
 River" and the sonnet " Possibilities; " on March 15, 1882, 
 he writes his last lines, being the closing stanza of " The 
 Bells of San Bias; " he dies at his Cambridge home, March 
 24, 1882. 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 629 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON LONGFELLOW. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, 72, 37. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1873, Osgood, I: 58-68. 
 Kennedy, W. S.," H.W. Longfellow." Cambridge, 1882, King, v. index. 
 Stedman, E. C., " Poets of America. " Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 80-225. 
 
 Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 296-298. 
 Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits. " Edinburgh, 1852, Hogg, 2: 254-256. 
 Poe, E. A., "Works." New York, 1855, 3: 292-374. 
 Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890, Scribner. 
 Lang, A., "Letters on Literature." New York, 1892, 37~47- 
 Underwood, F. H., " H. W. Longfellow." Boston, 1882, Houghton, 
 
 Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
 Fiske, J., "The Unseen World." Boston, 1876, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 237-265. 
 Longfellow, S., " Final Memorials of H. W. Longfellow." Boston, 
 
 1876, Ticknor, v. index. 
 Longfellow, S., "Life, Letters, and Journal of H. W. Longfellow." 
 
 Boston, 1886, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., 2 volumes, v. index. 
 Robertson, E. H., " Life of H. W. Longfellow" (Great Writers Series). 
 
 London, 1887, W. Scott, v. index. 
 
 "Lives of Famous Poets." London, 1878, Moxon, 
 Character Studies." New York, 1894, Whittaker, 
 
 Rossetti, W. M. 
 
 383-39L 
 Saunders, F., ' 
 
 113-130. 
 Scudder, H. E., "Men and Letters," Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 23-70. 
 Mitford, M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life. " New York, 1851, 
 
 Harper, 61-71. 
 
 Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes." New York, 1885, Crowell, 289-296 
 Stoddard, R. H., "Poets' Homes." Boston, 1871, Lothrop, 1-18. 
 Devey, J., "Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 360-368. 
 Haweis, H. R., "Poets in the Pulpit." London, 1883, Sampson, Low 
 
 & Co., 1-32. 
 Matthews, Brander, "Introduction to American Literature." New York, 
 
 1896, American Book Company, 124-137. 
 Whitman, W., "Essays from the Critic." Boston, 1892. 
 Whittier, J. G., "Prose Works." Boston, 1889, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 3: 365-374. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., " Poetical Works. " Boston, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 Co., 142. 
 
630 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Griswold, R. W., "Poets and Poetry of America." Philadelphia, 1846, 
 
 Carey & Hart, 297-301. 
 
 Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 296-298. 
 Devey, J., " A Comparative Estimate. " London, 1873, Moxon, 360-367. 
 North American Review, 132: 383-406 (A. Trollope) ; 105: 124-148 
 
 (C. E. Norton); 69: 196-215 (Lowell); 82: 272-275 (E. E. 
 
 Hale); 104: 531-540 (W. D. Howells); 66: 215, and 55: 114, 
 
 and 50: 145 (C. C. Felton). 
 
 Scribner's Monthly, 17: 1-19 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Harper's Magazine, 65 : 123-128 (G. W. Curtis); 93: 327-343 (W. D. 
 
 Howells). 
 
 Century, 4: 926-941 (E. C. Stedman). 
 
 Good Words, 23: 385-387 (Bret Harte); 28: 154-159 (F. H. Underwood). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 49: 721, 722 (O. W. Holmes); 59: 398-409 (H. E. 
 
 Scudder). 
 Nation, 34: 266, 267 (T. W. Higginson) ; 42: 300-307 (G. E. Wood- 
 
 berry). 
 
 Arena, 15: 183-186 (M. J. Savage). 
 Chautauquan, 22 : 412-416 (A. S. Cook). 
 Lippincotfs Magazine, 57: 95-104 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Me C hirers Magazine, 7: 114-121 (E. S. Phelps). 
 Critic, 2: 101 (W. Whitman); 3: 333 (W. S. Kennedy). 
 Athenceum, '82, 1 : 411 (A. Dobson). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Artistic Fidelity Finish. 
 
 " Had Theocritus written in English, not Greek, 
 
 I believe that his exquisite sense would scarce change a line 
 Of that rare, tender, virgin-like pastoral Evangeline. 
 That's not ancient nor modern, its place is apart 
 Where time has no sway, in the realm of pure Art; 
 'Tis a shrine of retreat from earth's hubbub and strife, 
 As quiet and chaste as the author's own life." Lowell. 
 
 "Longfellow's artistic ability is admirable, because it is not 
 seen. It is rather mental than mechanical. . . . The 
 best artist is he who accommodates his diction to his subject ; 
 and in this sense Longfellow is an artist. He selects with 
 
LONGFELLOW 631 
 
 great delicacy and precision the exact phrase which best sug- 
 gests his idea." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "Longfellow is a craftsman of unerring taste. He lived 
 for poetry. . . . The nicest skill was required to protect 
 the verse [that of " Hiawatha "] from gathering an effect of 
 burlesque or of commonplace ; yet this it never does. 
 He was a lyrical artist whose taste outranked his inspiration. 
 . . . He always gave of his best; neither toil nor trouble 
 could dismay him until art had done its perfect work. It was 
 a kind of genius his sure perception of the fit and attractive." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " In the ' Skeleton in Armor' we find a pure and perfect the- 
 sis, artistically treated. We find the beauty of bold courage 
 and self-confidence, of love and maiden devotion, of reckless 
 adventure, and finally, of life-continuing grief. Combined 
 with all this we have numerous points of beauty, apparently 
 insulated, but all aiding the main effect or impression. The 
 heart is stirred, and the mind does not lament its mal- 
 instruction. The meter is simple, sonorous, well-balanced, 
 and fully adapted to the subject. On the whole, there are 
 few truer poems than this." Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 " Longfellow, though not a very great magician and master 
 of language not a Keats by any means has often, by sheer 
 force of plain sincerity, struck exactly the right note, and 
 matched his thought with music that haunts us and will not 
 be forgotten." Andrew Lang. 
 
 " This fine sense of form, this intuitive perception of fit- 
 ness, was an inestimable endowment of the artist, and is one 
 of his passports to immortality. ... In all that calls for 
 delicate taste, a fine sense of fitness, and a skilful use of mate- 
 rial already formed, this trilogy [" Christus "] has the poet's 
 distinctive mark." H. E. Scudder. 
 
 " An exquisite literary artist, a very Benvenuto of grace 
 and skill. . . . A literary artist of consummate elegance." 
 George William Curtis. 
 
632 LONGFELLOW 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Maiden ! with the meek, brown eyes, 
 In whose orbs a shadow lies 
 Like the dusk in evening skies ! 
 
 " Thou whose locks outshine the sun, 
 Golden tresses, wreathed in one, 
 As the braided streamlets run ! 
 
 " Standing, with reluctant feet, 
 Where the brook and river meet, 
 Womanhood and childhood fleet ! " 
 
 Ma idcn hood. 
 
 " The sun is bright, the air is clear, 
 
 The darting swallows soar and sing, 
 And from the stately elms I hear 
 The bluebird prophesying spring. 
 
 " All things rejoice in youth and love, 
 The fulness of their first delight ! 
 And learn from the soft heavens above 
 The melting tenderness of night." 
 
 // Is Not Always May. 
 " She lies asleep, 
 
 And from her parted lips her gentle breath 
 Comes like the fragrance from the lips of flowers ; 
 Her tender limbs are still, and on her breast 
 The cross she prayed to, ere she fell asleep, 
 Rises and falls with the soft tide of dreams, 
 Like a light barge safe moored." The Spanish Student. 
 
 2. Perception of Beauty. " They are wrong who make 
 light of Longfellow's service as an American poet. His ad- 
 mirers may be no longer a critical majority, yet surely he 
 helped to quicken the New World sense of beauty. . . . 
 Our true rise of poetry may be dated from Longfellow's method 
 of exciting an interest in it as an expression of beauty and 
 feeling. . . . Puritanism was opposed to beauty as a 
 
LONGFELLOW 633 
 
 strange god and to sentiment as an idle thing. Longfellow 
 so adapted the beauty and sentiment of other lands to the 
 convictions of his people as to beguile their reason through 
 their finer senses and speedily to satisfy them that loveliness 
 and righteousness may go together." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Were it not that young misses have made the phrase of 
 equivocal meaning, we would call him ' a beautiful poet.' He 
 has a feeling exquisitely fine for what is generally understood 
 by the term of beauty that is, for actual earthly beauty, 
 idealized and refined by the imagination. . . . His sense 
 of beauty, though uncommonly vivid, is not the highest of 
 which the mind is capable. He has little conception of its 
 mysterious spirit. . . . His mind never appears oppressed, 
 nor his sight dimmed by its exceeding glory. He feels and 
 loves and creates what is beautiful ; but he hymns no reverence, 
 he pays no adoration to the Spirit of Beauty." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " His powers were rare, his studies were helpful, his sense 
 of proportion and of melody exquisite, his perception of beauty 
 keen." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The rising moon has hid the stars ; 
 Her level rays, like golden bars, 
 Lie on the landscape green, 
 With shadows brown between. 
 
 " And silver-white the river gleams, 
 As if Diana, in her dreams, 
 Had dropt her silver bow 
 Upon the meadows low." Endymion. 
 
 " Beautiful was the night. Behind the black wall of the forest, 
 Tipping its summit with silver, arose the moon. On the river 
 Fell here and there through the branches a tremulous gleam 
 
 of the moonlight, 
 Like the sweet thoughts of love on a darkened and devious 
 
 spirit. " Evangeline, 
 
634 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " There is a quiet spirit in these woods, 
 
 That dwells where'er the gentle south-wind blows ; 
 Where, underneath the white-thorn, in the glade, 
 The wild flowers bloom, or, kissing the soft air, 
 The leaves above their sunny palms outspread. 
 With what a tender and impassioned voice 
 It fills the nice and delicate ear of thought, 
 When the fast ushering star of morning comes 
 O'er-riding the gray hills with golden scarf; 
 Or when the cowled and dusky-sandaled Eve, 
 In mourning weeds, from out the western gate, 
 Departs with silent pace ! That spirit moves 
 In the green valley, where the silver brook, 
 From its full laver, pours the white cascade ; 
 And babbling low amid the tangled woods, 
 Slips down through moss-grown stones with endless laughter." 
 
 The Spirit of Poetry. 
 
 3. Humanity Sympathy Tenderness " Owing 
 to the tenderness seldom absent from his work, Longfellow 
 has often been called the poet of the affections. . . . With 
 his age his tenderness grew upon him, as men's traits will for 
 good or bad." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The humanities, to adopt a phrase, were never long ab- 
 sent from Mr. Longfellow's thoughts. We feel their presence 
 in 'The Old Clock on the Stairs,' in 'The Bridge,' etc." 
 R. H. Stoddard. 
 " Does it make a man worse that his character's such 
 
 As to make his friends love him (as you think) too much ? 
 
 Why, there's not a bard at this moment alive 
 
 More willing than he that his fellows should thrive ; 
 
 While you are abusing him thus even now 
 
 He would help either one of you out of a slough." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 " Each of his most noted poems is the song of a feeling 
 common to every mind in moods into which every mind is 
 liable to fall. . . . There is a humanity in them which 
 
LONGFELLOW 635 
 
 is irresistible in the fit measures to which they are wedded. 
 . . . He is the poet of the household, of the fireside, of 
 the universal home feeling. The infinite tenderness and pa- 
 tience, the pathos, and the beauty of daily life, of familiar 
 emotion, and the common scene these are the significance of 
 that verse whose beautiful and simple melody, softly murmur- 
 ing for more than forty years, made the singer the most be- 
 loved of living men." George William Curtis. 
 
 ' 'Longfellow is wellnigh universal in his sympathies, and 
 so is the beloved of all men." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 11 Longfellow wrote for humanity, and humanity recognized 
 its own hopes and feelings in the plain aphoristic patience and 
 cheer of < The Psalm of Life.' " C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " He comes as the poet of melody, courtesy, deference, 
 poet of all sympathetic gentleness and universal poet 
 of women and young people." Waif Whitman. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " O little feet ! that such long years 
 
 Must wander on through hopes and fears, 
 
 Must ache and bleed beneath your load ; 
 I, nearer to the wayside inn 
 Where toil may cease and rest begin, 
 
 Am weary, thinking of your load ! " Weariness. 
 
 " Thou unknown hero, sleeping by the sea 
 In thy forgotten grave ! with secret shame 
 
 I feel my pulses beat, my forehead burn, 
 When I remember thou hast given for me 
 All that thou hadst, thy life, thy very name, 
 And I can give thee nothing in return." 
 
 A Nameless Grave. 
 
 " ' My Lord has need of these flowerets gay,' 
 
 The Reaper said, and smiled ; 
 ' Dear tokens of the earth are they, 
 Where he was once a child. 
 
636 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " They shall all bloom in fields of light, 
 
 Transplanted by my care, 
 And saints, upon their garments white, 
 These sacred blossoms wear.' 
 
 " And the mother gave, in tears and pain, 
 
 The flowers she most did love ; 
 She knew she would find them all again 
 In the fields of light above." 
 
 The Reaper and the Flowers. 
 
 4. Sentiment Grace Mildness. " Longfellow is 
 mr poet of grace and sentiment. Scores of followers have 
 caught a manner which shows to advantage when transferred ; 
 but his position for years at the head of even a sentimental 
 school, shows that Longfellow was not without a genius of his 
 own.- . . . Superlative joy and woe alike were foreign 
 to the verse of Longfellow. It came neither from the heights 
 nor out of the depths but along the even tenor of a fortunate 
 life. . . . So far as comfort, virtue, domestic tenderness, 
 and freedom from extreme of passion and incident are char- 
 acteristics of the middle classes, he has been their minstrel. 
 . . . ' The cry of the human ' did not haunt his ear. When 
 he avails himself of a piteous situation he does so as tranquilly 
 as the nuns who broider on tapestry the torments of the 
 doomed in hell. . . . There is something exasperating to 
 serious minds in his placid waiver of the grievous or the dis- 
 tasteful. . . . From the first he was a poet of sentiment. 
 His worldly wisdom was of the gospel kind, so 
 gently tempered as to do no evil. . . . Next above these 
 pretty homilies are his poems of sentiment and twilight brood- 
 ings. ' The Reaper and the Flowers,' ' Footsteps of Angels,' 
 etc., come home to pensive and gentle natures." E. C. Stcd- 
 man. 
 
 " The secret of his youthful devotion to his art does not lie 
 wholly in his intellectual range and richness; it springs also 
 
 
LONGFELLOW 637 
 
 from the universality of his sentiment we use the word in its 
 pure and dignified sense in a wide, diffused glow, which 
 does not rise to the heat and blaze of passion, and is so much 
 the more permanent." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " Morality to Emerson was the very breath of existence ; 
 to Longfellow it was a sentiment." E. S. Robertson. 
 
 " It was customary to say that his poetry was sentimental. 
 So it was ; but the sentiment was healthy, sweet, and true. 
 It was the sentiment which fills with most the place 
 of reasoning, with some is the substitute for faith; a sentiment 
 tender, humane, devout, trusting, submissive, but manly, 
 touching all objects with romantic charm, associating the 
 lowest with some human interest, connecting the highest with 
 the mysteriousness of Providence and the unchanging benig- 
 nity of God." O. B. Frothingham. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 As a fond mother, when the day is o'er, 
 
 Leads by the hand her little child to bed, 
 
 Half willing, half reluctant to be led, 
 
 And leave his broken playthings on the floor, 
 
 Still gazing at them through the open door, 
 
 Nor wholly reassured and comforted 
 
 By promises of others in their stead, 
 
 Which, though more splendid, may not please him more; 
 
 So Nature deals with us, and takes away 
 
 Our playthings one by one, and by the hand 
 
 Leads us to rest so gently, that we go 
 
 Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay, 
 
 Being too full of sleep to understand 
 
 How far the unknown transcends the what we know." 
 
 Nature. 
 " The birds sang in the branches, 
 
 With sweet, familiar tone ; 
 
 But the voices of the children 
 
 Will be heard in dreams alone. 
 
638 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " And the boy that walked beside me, 
 He could not understand 
 Why closer in mine, ah ! closer, 
 I pressed his warm, soft hand." 
 
 The Open Window. 
 
 " The shadow of the linden-trees 
 Lay moving on the grass ; 
 Between them and the moving boughs, 
 A shadow, thou didst pass. 
 
 " Thy dress was like the lilies, 
 And thy heart as pure, as they ; 
 One of God's holy messengers 
 Did walk with me that day. 
 
 " I saw the branches of the trees 
 Bend down thy touch to meet, 
 The clover-blossoms in the grass 
 Rise up to kiss thy feet." A Gleam of Sunshine. 
 
 5. Revery Repose. "His life and works together 
 were an edifice fairly built the ' House Beautiful,' whose air 
 is peace, where repose and calm are ministrant, where the ra- 
 ven's croak, symbol of the unrest of a more perturbed genius, 
 is never heard. . . . Heine's rhythm and revery were 
 repeated in < The Day Is Done,' 'The Bridge,' 'Twilight/ 
 etc., but not his passion and scorn. . . . Neither war 
 nor grief ever too much disturbed his artist-soul. Tragedy 
 went no deeper with him than its pathos ; it was another 
 element of the beautiful. Death was a luminous transition." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " He has little of the unrest and frenzy of the bard. . . . 
 An air of repose, of quiet power, is around his composi- 
 tions."^. P. Whipple. 
 
 " That calm sweetness of spirit, which was so apparent in 
 Longfellow, was an acquisition as well as an endowment." 
 Horace E. Scudder. 
 
 
LONGFELLOW 639 
 
 "Mr. Longfellow's instrument is not the trumpet but the 
 flute. He does not so much stir as assure and soothe more 
 lullaby than appeal. He croons a cradle-song to this great 
 humanity, still a child, tired and worn on its way. He gives 
 the peace it implores." C. A. Bartol. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I see the lights of the village 
 
 Gleam through the rain and the mist, 
 And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me 
 That my soul cannot resist ; 
 
 " A feeling of sadness and longing, 
 That is not akin to pain, 
 And resembles sorrow only 
 As the mist resembles the rain." 
 
 The Day Is Done. 
 
 " From the garden just below 
 Little puffs of perfume blow, 
 And a sound is in his ears 
 Of the murmur of the bees 
 In the shining chestnut trees ; 
 Nothing else he heeds or hears. 
 All the landscape seems to swoon 
 In the happy afternoon ; 
 Slowly o'er his senses creep 
 The encroaching waves of sleep, 
 And he sinks as sank the town, 
 Unresisting, fathoms down, 
 Into caverns cool and deep ! " Amalfi. 
 
 " This is the place. Stand still, my steed, 
 Let me review the scene, 
 And summon from the shadowy Past 
 The forms that once have been. 
 
640 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " The Past and Present here unite 
 Beneath Time's flowing tide, 
 Like footprints hidden by a brook 
 But seen on either side." 
 
 A Gleam of Sunshine. 
 
 Bookishness Erudition. Of all our great Amer- 
 poets, Longfellow has drawn most from books and least 
 directly from nature. 
 
 " The bookish flavor of his work is at once its strength and 
 its weakness. ... In reading Longfellow we see that 
 the world of books was to him a real world. From first to 
 last, if he had been banished from his library, his imagination 
 would have been blind and deaf and silent. It is true that he 
 fed upon the choicest yield of literature ; his gathered honey 
 was of the thyme and clover, not of the rude buckwheat. . . . 
 He had a bookishness as assimilative as that of Hunt or 
 Lamb. . . . In ' Evangeline ' there are refined pictures 
 of scenery that was familiar to him with just as pleasing de- 
 scriptions of that which he knew only through his books." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 11 Even when dealing expressly with American subjects, his 
 mind was so stored with the abundance of a matured civiliza- 
 tion that he was constantly, by reference and allusion, carry- 
 ing the reader on a voyage to Europe." Horace E. Scudder. 
 
 "Among the minor defects of the play ["The Spanish 
 Student "] we may mention the frequent allusion to book inci- 
 dents not generally known and requiring each a note by way 
 of explanation. The drama demands that everything be so 
 instantaneously evident that he who runs may read ; and the 
 only impression effected by these notes to a play is that the 
 author is desirous of showing his reading." Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 11 Longfellow has enjoyed every advantage that culture can 
 give, and his knowledge of many nations and many languages 
 undoubtedly has given breadth to his mind and opened to 
 him ever new sources of poetic interest." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 
LONGFELLOW 641 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " As ancient Priam at the Scaean gate 
 Sat on the walls of Troy in regal state 
 With the old men, too old and weak to fight, 
 Chirping like grasshoppers in their delight 
 To see the embattled hosts, with spear and shield, 
 Of Trojans and Achaians in the field ; 
 So from the snowy summits of our years 
 We see you in the plain, as each appears, 
 And question of you ; asking, ' Who is he 
 That towers above the others ? Which may be 
 Atreides, Menelaus, Odysseus, 
 Ajax the great, or bold Idomeneus ? ' " 
 
 Morituri Salutamus. 
 
 " Some legend written by Judah Rav 
 In his Gemara of Babylon ; 
 Or something from the Gulistan 
 The tale of the Cazy of Hamadan, 
 Or of that king of Khorasan 
 Who saw in dreams the eyes of one 
 That had a hundred years been dead." 
 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn . 
 
 Visions of the days departed, shadowy phantoms filled my 
 
 brain ; 
 They who live in history only seemed to walk the earth again ; 
 
 " All the Foresters of Flanders, mighty Baldwin Bras de Fer, 
 Lyderick du Bucq and Cressy Philip, Guy de Dampierre. 
 
 " I beheld the pageants splendid that adorned those days of 
 
 old; 
 Stately dames like queens attended, knights who bore the 
 
 Fleece of Gold ; 
 
 " Lombard and Venetian merchants with deep-laden argosies ; 
 Ministers from twenty nations ; more than royal pomp and 
 ease." The Belfry of Bruges. 
 
642 LONGFELLOW 
 
 7. Imitation Assimilation. While Longfellow has 
 been generally acquitted of the moral guilt implied in Poe's 
 famous article entitled " Mr. Longfellow and other Plagiar- 
 ists," even his warmest admirers are forced to admit that he 
 has repeatedly, if unconsciously, assimilated the ideas and 
 even the forms of other poets. 
 
 " It must be acknowledged, at the outset, that few poets of 
 his standing have profited more openly by examples that 
 suited their taste and purpose. . . . Like greater bards 
 before him, he was a good borrower. . . . Given a task 
 which he liked with a pattern supplied by another and 
 few could equal him. . . . The poet's matter, if often 
 gleaned from foreign literature, was novel to his readers, and 
 the style distinct from that of any English contemporary. 
 But if there was nothing of the Grecian in him, there 
 was much of the Latinist, and with Virgil's polished muse he 
 might have been quite at ease. . . . The superb apostro- 
 phe to the Union [at the close of " The Building of the 
 Ship "] outvies that ode of Horace on which it is modelled." 
 E. C. Stedman. 
 
 /'Even when treating of distinctly American subjects, 
 . . . he borrowed his expressions from traditions of English 
 poetry. . . . There are repeated instances of entirely 
 second-hand reflections of scenes which were impossible to his 
 eye. . . . Even when dealing with a slight historic fact, 
 as in the ' Hymn to the Moravian Nuns of Bethlehem,' he 
 translated the entire incident into terms of foreign import. 
 . . . It would not be difficult for one, running through 
 the entire body of the poems, to find in those relating to for- 
 eign subjects a constant indirect reference to existing literary 
 materials. Not only so, but in such poems as ' The Court- 
 ship of Miles Standish ' and ' Evangeline,' the scaffolding 
 which the poet put up could easily be put up by the histor- 
 ical student ; in the ' Tales of a Wayside Inn ' only one is 
 in any peculiar sense the poet's invention ; while ' Hia- 
 
LONGFELLOW 
 
 watha ' is Schoolcraft translated into poetry." Horace E. 
 Scudder. 
 
 il Throughout * The Spanish Student/ as well as through- 
 out other compositions of its author, there runs a very obvi- 
 ous vein of imitation. We are perpetually reminded of some- 
 thing we have seen before some old acquaintance in manner 
 or matter ; and even where the similarity cannot be said to 
 amount to plagiarism, it is still injurious to the poet in the 
 good opinion of him who reads. . . . Much as we ad- 
 mire the genius of Mr. Longfellow, we are fully sensible to 
 his many errors of affectation and imitation." Edgar A. 
 Foe. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " So the Hexameter, rising and singing, with cadence sonorous, 
 Falls ; and in refluent rhythm back the Pentameter flows." 
 
 Elegiac Verse. 
 
 Compare Coleridge's 
 
 " In the hexameter rises the fountain's silvery column ; 
 In the pentameter aye falling in melody back." 
 
 " Look then into thy heart, and write ! " 
 
 Voices of the Night. 
 
 Compare Sydney's 
 " Fool, said my muse to me, look in thy heart and write." 
 
 " Oh, what a glory doth this world put on 
 For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth 
 Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks 
 On duties well performed and days well spent ! 
 For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves, 
 Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings. 
 He shall so hear the solemn hymn that death 
 Has lifted up for all, that he shall go 
 To his long resting-place without a tear." Autumn. 
 
644 LONGFELLOW 
 
 Compare with the following from Bryant's " Thanatopsis," 
 written when Longfellow was only four years old. 
 
 " To him who in the love of nature holds 
 
 Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
 A various language ; 
 
 " Go forth under the open sky, and list 
 
 To nature'/ teachings, while from all around 
 Earth and her waters and the depths of air 
 Comes a still voice : 
 
 ./..... ... 
 
 " Like/one who wraps the drapery of his couch about him 
 And*lies down to pleasant dreams." 
 
 8. Stock Morality Commonplace Didacticism. 
 
 " A cheerful acceptance of the lessons of life was the moral, 
 suggested in many lyrics, which commended him to all virtu- 
 ous, home-keeping folk, but in the end poorly served him 
 with the critics. He gained a foothold by his least poetic 
 work verse whose easy lessons are adjusted to common needs ; 
 little sermons in rhyme that are sure to catch the ear and to 
 become hackneyed as a sidewalk song. He often taught, by 
 choice, the primary class; and the upper form is slow to forget 
 it. . . . As a moralist no one could make the common- 
 place more attractive. . . . Simple, even elementary it 
 [his poetry] manifestly is, despite the learning which he puts 
 to use." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The morality of the ' Psalm of Life ' is commonplace. If 
 versified by a poetaster, it would inspire no deep feeling and 
 strengthen no high purposes. But the worn axioms of didactic 
 verse have the breath of a new life breathed into them when 
 they are touched by genius. We are made to love and fol- 
 low what before we merely assented to with a lazy acqui- 
 escence. ... It would be easy to say much of Long- 
 fellow's singular felicity in addressing the moral nature of man. 
 It has been said of him, sometimes in derision, that all his 
 
LONGFELLOW 645 
 
 poems have a moral. There is doubtless a tendency in his 
 mind to evolve some useful meaning from his finest imaginations 
 and to preach when he should only sing ; but we still think 
 that the moral of his compositions is not thrust intrusively 
 forward, but rather flows naturally from the subject. 
 He inculcates with much force that poetic stoicism which 
 teaches us to reckon earthly evils at their true worth and to 
 endure with patience what results inevitably from our con- 
 dition." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Even in spite of this friendliness and affection which 
 Longfellow wins, I can see, of course, that he does moralize 
 too much. The first part of his lyrics is always the best ; the 
 part where he is dealing with the subject. Then comes the 
 ' practical application ' as preachers say, and I feel somehow 
 that that is sometimes uncalled for, disenchanting, and even 
 manufactured." Andrew Lang. 
 
 " His didactics are all out of place. . . . We do not 
 mean to say that a didactic moral may not be well made the 
 undercurrent of a poetic thesis ; but that it can never be well 
 put so obtrusively forth as in the majority of his composi- 
 tions. ... It will be at once evident . . . that 
 he regards the inculcation of a moral as essential. . . . 
 Didacticism is the prevalent tone of his song. His invention, 
 his imagery, his all, is made subservient to the elucidation of 
 one or more points, . . . which he looks upon as truth." 
 Edgar A. Poe. 
 
 " Shall we think less of our poet because he aimed in his 
 verse not merely to please, but also to impress some elevating 
 thought in the minds of his readers? . . . No poet knows 
 better than Longfellow how to impress a moral without seem- 
 ing to preach. ' ' Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
646 LONGFELLOW 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Thanks, thanks to thee, my worthy friend, 
 For the lesson thou hast taught ! 
 Thus at the flaming forge of life 
 Our fortunes must be wrought ; 
 Thus on its sounding anvil shaped 
 Each burning deed and thought." 
 
 The Village Blacksmith. 
 
 " Big words do not smite like war-clubs, 
 Boastful breath is not a bow-string 
 Taunts are not so sharp as arrows, 
 Deeds are better things than words are, 
 Actions mightier than boastings." Hiawatha. 
 
 " And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art, 
 
 That readest this brief psalm, 
 As one by one thy hopes depart, 
 Be resolute and calm. 
 
 " Oh, fear not in a world like this, 
 
 And thou shalt know ere long 
 Know how sublime a thing it is 
 To suffer and be strong." 7 he Light of Stars. 
 
 9. Flexibility Variety Lyric Power. " His 
 
 command of many meters, each adapted to his special sub- 
 ject, shows also how artistically he uses sound to reenforce 
 vision, and satisfy the ear while pleasing the eye. 
 
 " * When descends on the Atlantic 
 The gigantic 
 
 Storm-wind of the equinox, 
 Landward in his wrath he scourges 
 The toiling surges, 
 
 Laden with sea-weed from the rocks.' 
 
 The ear least skilled to detect the harmonies of verse feels the 
 obvious effect of lines like these. In his long poems . . . 
 Longfellow never repeats himself. He occupies a new domain 
 
LONGFELLOW 647 
 
 of poetry with each successive poem, and always gives the pub- 
 lic the delightful shock of a new surprise." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "His verse has grace, melody, and variety that leave no 
 room for criticism. ... It must be admitted that there 
 is not to be found in the work of any other poet such variety, 
 both as regards themes and treatment, as in the cycle of Long- 
 fellow's poems. . . . We are struck by the variety and 
 fitness of the metrical forms. . . . Hardly any poetry 
 of our age has produced so . many styles of effective rhythm. 
 He employed successfully nearly all the rhythmic 
 forms of which the language is capable, except blank verse." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " With Longfellow's faculty of putting a story into rippling 
 verse almost as lightly as another would tell it in prose, we find 
 ourselves assured of as many poems as he had themes. 
 He combined beauty with feeling in lyrical trifles which rival 
 those of Tennyson and other masters of technique, and was 
 almost our earliest maker of verse that might be termed exquis- 
 ite. . . . Longfellow, employing regular forms of verse, 
 was flexible where many are awkward." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "Although Longfellow was not fond of metrical contor- 
 tions and acrobatic achievements, he well knew the effect of 
 skilful variation in the forms of verse and well-managed re- 
 frains or repetitions. . . . Nothing lasts like a coin or a 
 lyric. ... I think we may venture to say that some of 
 the shorter poems of Longfellow must surely reach a remote 
 posterity and be considered then, as now, ornaments to Eng- 
 lish literature. We may compare them with the best short 
 poems of the language without fearing that they will suffer. " 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 "Our vain desire 
 
 Aches for the voice we loved so long to hear 
 In Dorian flute-notes breathing soft and clear 
 The sweet contralto that could never tire." 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
648 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " The melody of this versification is very remarkable : some 
 of his stanzas sound with the richest and sweetest music of 
 which language is capable." C. C. Felton. 
 
 " His works are graceful, tender, pensive, gentle, melodi- 
 ous the strain of a troubadour." George William Curtis. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Te ocean old, 
 Centuries old, 
 
 Strong as youth, and as uncontrolled, 
 Paces restless to and fro, 
 Up and down the sands of gold. 
 His beating heart is not at rest ; 
 And far and wide, 
 With ceaseless flow, 
 His beard of snow 
 Heaves with the heaving of his breast." 
 
 The Building of the Ship. 
 
 " Out of the bosom of the Air, 
 
 Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken, 
 Over the woodlands brown and bare, 
 
 Over the harvest-fields forsaken, 
 Silent and soft and slow 
 Descends the snow. 
 
 " Even as our cloudy fancies take 
 
 Suddenly shape in some divine expression, 
 
 Even as the troubled heart doth make 
 In the white countenance confession, 
 
 The troubled sky reveals 
 
 The grief it feels." Snow-Flakes. 
 
 " This song o mine 
 
 Is a Song of the YJae 
 To be sung by the glowing embers 
 
 Qf wayside inns, 
 
 When the .rain begins 
 To darken the drear Novembers." 
 
 Cataivba Wine, 
 
LONGFELLOW 649 
 
 10. Narrative Power. " He was the first American 
 to compose sustained narrative poems that gained and kept a 
 place in literature. . . . Longfellow again and again re- 
 ceived his crown of praise ; and this ... in return for 
 the service in which he was easily first the art which gained 
 for an old-time minstrel a willing largess, that of the racon- 
 teur, the teller of bewitching tales. . . . This was due to 
 a modern and natural style, to the sweet variety of his meas- 
 ures, and to his ease in dialogue. His frequent gayety and 
 constant sense of the humanities made him a true story-teller 
 for the multitude." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 11 Mr. Longfellow's method of telling a story will compare 
 favorably . . . with any of the recognized masters of 
 English narrative verse from Chaucer down. . . . He 
 has more than held his own against all English-writing poets, 
 and in no walk of poetry so positively as that of telling a story. 
 In an age of story-tellers, he stands at their head, not only in 
 the poems I have mentioned, but also in the lesser stories in- 
 cluded in his ' Tales of a Wayside Inn.' " R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 " Longfellow's power of picturing to the eye and the soul 
 a scene, a place, an event, a person, is almost unrivalled." 
 . P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And King Olaf heard the cry, 
 Saw the red light in the sky, 
 
 Laid his hand upon his sword, 
 As he leaned upon the railing, 
 And his ships went sailing, sailing, 
 
 Northward into Drontheim fiord. 
 
 " There he stood as one who dreamed ; 
 And the red light glanced and gleamed 
 
 On the armor that he wore ; 
 And he shouted, as the rifted 
 Streamers o'er him shook and shifted: 
 ' I accept thy challenge, Thor.' " 
 
 The Saga of King Olaf. 
 
650 LONGFELLOW 
 
 " Meanwhile Standish had noted the faces and figures of Indians 
 Peeping and creeping about from bush to tree in the forest, 
 Feigning to look for game, with arrows set on their bow- 
 strings, 
 Drawing about him still closer and closer the net of the 
 
 ambush. 
 
 But undaunted he stood, and dissembled and treated them 
 smoothly." The Courtship of Miles Standish. 
 
 11 In a great castle near Valladolid, 
 
 Moated and high and by fair woodlands hid, 
 There dwelt, as from the chronicles we learn, 
 An qld Hidalgo, proud and taciturn, 
 Whose name has perished with his towers of stone, 
 tfid all his actions save this one alone." 
 
 Tales of a Wayside Inn. 
 
 II. Profuse, Sometimes Labored, Imagery. 
 
 .very thing suggested an image except when his imagery 
 rfggested the thought of which he made it seem the reflection. 
 . . . He hunts about for some emotion or the phase of 
 life which these things aptly illustrate. This process not sel- 
 dom becomes a vice of style. He constantly applied his im- 
 agery in a formal way. . . . But whether his metaphors 
 came of themselves or with prayer and fasting, they always* 
 came, and often were novel and poetic." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Not only was his poetry itself instinct with artistic power, 
 but his appropriating genius drew within the circle of his 
 art a great variety of illustration and suggestion from the 
 other arts. ... He had a catholic taste, and his rich 
 decoration of simple themes was the most persuasive agency at 
 work in familiarizing Americans with the treasures of art and 
 legend in the old world." Horace E. Scudder. 
 
 "The literary decoration of his style, the aroma and color 
 and richness, so to speak, which it derives from his ample ac- 
 complishments in literature, are incomparable. His verse is 
 embroidered with allusion and names and illustrations wrought 
 with a taste so true and a skill so rare that the robe, though it 
 
 
LONGFELLOW 65 1 
 
 be cloth of gold, is as finely flexible as linen, and still beauti- 
 fully reveals, not conceals, the living form." George William 
 Curtis. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "Arrayed in its robes of russet and scarlet and yellow, 
 Bright with the sheen of the dew, each glittering tree of the 
 
 forest 
 Flashed like the plane-tree the Persian adorned with mantles 
 
 and jewels." Evangeline. 
 
 " And as she gazed from the window, she saw serenely the moon 
 pass 
 
 Forth from the folds of a cloud, and one star follow her foot- 
 steps, 
 
 As out of Abraham's tent young Ishmael wandered with 
 Hagar. 
 
 " Bright rose the sun next day ; and all the flowers of the garden 
 Bathed his shining feet with their tears, and anointed his 
 
 tresses 
 With the delicious balm that they bore in their vases of 
 
 crystal." Evangeline. 
 
 " For now the western skies 
 Are red with sunset, and gray mists arise 
 Like damps that gather on a dead man's face." 
 
 Three Friends of Mine. 
 
 " How slowly through the lilac-scented air 
 
 Descends the tranquil moon ! Like thistle-down 
 The vapory clouds float in the peaceful sky." 
 
 The Spanish Student. 
 
 12. Occasional Vigor. While Longfellow's poetry, as 
 a whole, cannot be called vigorous, there are a few marked 
 exceptions. In speaking of the " Skeleton in Armor" Sted- 
 man says: "To old-fashioned people, this heroic ballad, 
 written over forty years ago, is worth a year's product of what 
 I may term Kensington-stitch verse." 
 
 " There is much of the old Norse energy in this composition 
 
6$2 LONGFELLOW 
 
 ["The Skeleton in Armor "] that rough, ravenous battle- 
 spirit, which for a time makes the reader's blood rush and 
 tingle in warlike sympathy." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " ' The Wreck of the Hesperus ' is deservedly admired, es- 
 pecially for the vigor of its descriptions. . . . The bal- 
 lad of ' Sir Humphrey Gilbert ' ... is full of the an- 
 cient vigor, such as it was when the language was new, and 
 custom had not worn off the sharp edges of words." F. H. 
 Underwood. 
 " You may say that he's smooth and all that till you're hoarse, 
 
 But remember that elegance also is force ; 
 
 After polishing granite as much as you will, 
 
 The heart keeps its tough old persistency still." Lowell. 
 
 " Whenever Mr. Longfellow's translation [of Dante] is kept 
 free from oddities of diction and construction, it is very ani- 
 mated and vigorous." -John Fiske. 
 
 "The poem [" Hymn of the Moravian Nuns"] 
 has a native fire and an enthusiasm kindled by the thought of 
 personal sacrifice in a great cause. So, too, in the ' Burial of 
 the Minnisink ' the poetic passion flames forth in 
 
 a single bold phrase at the end of the poem." Horace E. 
 Scudder. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Up leaped the Captain of Plymouth, and stamped on the floor, 
 
 till his armor 
 
 Clanged on the wall, where it hung, with a sound of sinister 
 omen. 
 
 " Wildly he shouted, and loud : 'John Alden ! you have be- 
 trayed me ! 
 
 Me, Miles Standish, your friend ! have supplanted, defrauded, 
 betrayed me ! 
 
 One of my ancestors ran his sword through the heart of Wat 
 Tyler ; 
 
 Who shall prevent me from running my own through the heart 
 of a traitor ? " The Courtship of Miles Standish. 
 
LONGFELLOW 653 
 
 " Silent a moment they stood, in speechless wonder, and then 
 rose 
 
 Louder and ever louder a wail of sorrow and anger, 
 
 And, by one impulse moved, they madly rushed to the door- 
 way. 
 
 Vain was the hope of escape ; and cries and fierce impreca- 
 tions 
 
 Rang through the house of prayer ; and high o'er the heads of 
 the others 
 
 Rose, with his arms uplifted, the figure of Basil the black- 
 smith, 
 
 As, on a stormy sea, a spar is tossed by the billows. 
 
 Flushed was his face and distorted with passion ; and wildly he 
 shouted 
 
 * Down with the tyrants of England ! We never have sworn 
 them allegiance ! 
 
 Death to these foreign soldiers, who seize on our homes and 
 our harvests ! ' " Evangeline. 
 
 " ' And as to catch the gale 
 
 Round veered the flapping sail, 
 Death ! was the helmsman's hail, 
 
 Death without quarter ! 
 Midships with iron keel 
 Struck we her ribs of steel ; 
 Down her black hulk did reel , 
 
 Through the black water ! 
 
 " ' As with his wings aslant, 
 Sails the fierce cormorant, 
 Seeking some rocky haunt, 
 
 With his prey laden ; 
 So toward the open main, 
 Beating to sea again, 
 Through the wild hurricane 
 Bore I the maiden.' " 
 
 The Skeleton in Armor. 
 
 13. Mild Religious Earnestness Trust Opti- 
 mism. " Through all the romantic grace and elegance of the 
 
654 LONGFELLOW 
 
 * Voices of the Night ' and ' Hyperion,' there is a moral ear- 
 nestness which is even more remarkable in the poems than in 
 the romance. . . . The 'Psalm of Life' was the very 
 heart-beat of the American conscience, and the ' Footsteps 
 of Angels ' was a hymn of the fond yearning of every human 
 heart. . . . It is the moral purity of his verse which at 
 once charms the heart, and in his first most famous poem, the 
 ' Psalm of Life,' it is the direct inculcation of a moral pur- 
 pose." George William Curtis. 
 
 11 He never sounds a note of despair; doubt never sweeps 
 darkly across his soul. . . . You who have ceased to be- 
 lieve in the progress* of right and the victory of good may be 
 recalled to a healthier and nobler view by the indomitable 
 hopefulness and deep trust to be found in the utterances of 
 Longfellow, "jy. . Haweis. 
 
 1 ' It [his poetry] is the gospel of good-will set to music. It 
 has carried sweetness and light to thousands of homes. It is 
 blended with our holiest affections and our immortal hopes." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " The great characteristic of Longfellow that of addressing 
 the moral nature through the imagination, of linking moral 
 truth to intellectual beauty is a far greater excellence. 
 A person, in reading the ' Psalm of Life/ does not 
 say that this poem ' is distinguished for nicety of epithet and 
 elaborate, scholarly finish ; ' but rather, ' this poem touches 
 the heroic string of my nature, breathes energy into my heart, 
 sustains my lagging purposes, and fixes my thoughts on what 
 is stable and eternal.' "-E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " A religious trust breathes through all his books, the spirit 
 of faith. . . . In a doubting or half-believing age, there 
 is no query of the primal truths of God and heaven on his 
 page." C. A. BartoL 
 
 " As long as the heart of humanity shall beat, his voice will 
 be heard in tones of music, singing words of consolation and 
 hope."/?, H. Stoddard. 
 
LONGFELLOW 655 
 
 " It [" Evangeline "] is a psalm of love and forgiveness ; the 
 gentleness and peace of Christian meekness and forbearance 
 breathe through it." Whittier. 
 
 " His heart was pure, his purpose high, 
 
 His thoughts serene, his patience vast. 
 He put all strifes of passion by 
 
 And lived to God from first to last." 
 
 William Winter. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Then shall the good stand in immortal bloom, 
 
 In the fair gardens of that second birth ; 
 And each bright blossom mingle its perfume 
 
 With that of flowers which never bloomed on earth." 
 
 God's Acre. 
 
 " Then pealed the bells more loud and deep : 
 ' God is not dead ; nor doth he sleep ! 
 The Wrong shall fail, 
 The Right prevail, 
 With peace on earth, good will to men.' " 
 
 Christmas Bells. 
 
 " Let us be patient ! These severe afflictions 
 
 Not from the ground arise, 
 But oftentimes celestial benedictions 
 Assume this dark disguise. 
 
 We see but dimly through the mists and vapors ; 
 
 Amid these earthly damps 
 What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers 
 
 May be heaven's distant lamps." Resignation. 
 
 14. Simplicity Naturalness. "In respect of this 
 simplicity and naturalness, his style is in strong contrast with 
 that of many writers of our time. There is no straining for 
 effect, there is no torturing of rhythm for novel patterns, no 
 wearisome iteration of petted words, no inelegant clipping of 
 
656 LONGFELLOW 
 
 syllables to meet the exigencies of a verse, no affected archa- 
 isms, rarely any liberty taken with language unless it may be 
 in the form of a few words in the translation of Dante." 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 "He was no word-monger, no winder of coil upon coil 
 about a subtle theme. ... He used his culture not to 
 veil the word, but to make it clear. He drew upon it for the 
 people in a manner which they could relish and comprehend." 
 . C. Stedman. 
 
 11 The clear thought, the true feeling, the pure aspiration, is 
 expressed with limpid simplicity. . . . His poems are 
 apples of gold in pictures of silver. There is nothing in them 
 excessive, nothing overwrought, nothing strained into tur- 
 gidity, obscurity, and nonsense. There is sometimes, indeed, 
 a fine stateliness, as in the ' Arsenal at Springfield,' and even 
 a resounding splendor of diction, as in ( Sandalphon.' But 
 when the melody is most delicate it is simple. The poet 
 throws nothing into the mist to make it large. How purely 
 melodious his verse can be without losing the thought or its 
 most transparent expression, is seen in The Evening Star ' 
 and ' Snow-Flakes.' " George William Curtis. 
 
 "His thought, though often deep, was never obscure. His 
 lyrics . . . have a singing simplicity. . . . This 
 simplicity was the the result of rare, artistic repression ; it was 
 not due to any poverty of intellect." Brander Matthews. 
 
 ' ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The twilight is sad and cloudy, 
 The wind blows wild and free, 
 And like the wings of sea-birds 
 Flash the white caps of the sea. 
 
 " But in the fisherman's cottage 
 There shines a ruddier light, 
 And a little face at the window 
 Peers out into the night. 
 
LONGFELLOW 657 
 
 " Close, close it is pressed to the window, 
 As if those childish eyes 
 Were looking into the darkness 
 To see some form arise." Twilight. 
 
 " He goes on Sunday to the church, 
 And sits among his boys ; 
 He hears the parson pray and preach, 
 He hears his daughter's voice 
 Singing in the village choir, 
 And it makes his heart rejoice. 
 
 " It sounds to him like her mother's voice, 
 Singing in Paradise ! 
 He needs must think of her once more, 
 How in the grave she lies ; 
 And with his hard, rough hand he wipes 
 A tear out of his eyes." 
 
 The Village Blacksmith. 
 
 ' On sunny slope and beechen swell, 
 The shadowed light of evening fell ; 
 And, where the maple's leaf was brown, 
 With soft and silent lapse came down 
 The glory that the wood receives, 
 At sunset, on its golden leaves. 
 
 " Far upward in the mellow light 
 
 Rose the blue hills. One cloud of white 
 
 Around a far uplifted cone, 
 
 In the warm blush of evening shone ; 
 
 An image of the silver lakes, 
 
 By which the Indian's soul awakes." 
 
 Burial of the Minnisink. 
 42 
 
BROWNING, 1812-1889 
 
 Biographical Outline. Robert Browning, born May 7, 
 1812, at Camberwell, London ; father a clerk in the Bank of 
 England and a man of fine literary taste ; mother " a Scot- 
 tish gentlewoman" descended from German stock; Brown- 
 ing is a precocious child of great activity and fiery temper ; 
 he enters a private school in infancy, makes verses before he 
 can write, and so excels older children in his studies as to 
 cause maternal jealousy ; later he enters the private school of 
 the Rev. Thomas Ready, where he remains till he is fourteen ; 
 he is passionately devoted to his mother, who gives him a 
 careful biblical training; he manifests also an early fondness 
 for animal pets ; he exhibits, as a boy, contempt for the edu- 
 cational methods of his school and for the stupidity of his 
 school- fellows, although he writes plays and compels the other 
 boys to act them ; his father is a great reader, and the house 
 is " literally crammed with books; " Browning reads omniv- 
 orously, preferring history and literature, and early develops 
 a fondness for rare books and first editions ; he becomes es- 
 pecially interested in the writers of the Elizabethan school 
 and in Byron ; at the age of twelve he writes a " volume " of 
 poems showing strong traces of Byron's influence, and calls it 
 " Incondita; " his father seeks in vain for a publisher of this 
 volume, and the original was probably destroyed by Brown- 
 ing, although a copy made by a friend of his mother was ex- 
 tant till 1871, when Browning destroyed it; " Incondita" 
 was read by the Rev. W. J. Fox, who afterward became 
 Browning's literary adviser and patron ; the copy so long pre- 
 served in manuscript was made by Miss Flower, a musician of 
 rare merit, who afterward wrote the hymn "Nearer, My God, to 
 
 658 
 
BROWNING 659 
 
 Thee ; " Browning was deeply devoted to her, and she is sup- 
 posed to have inspired his "Pauline; " in 1826 he acciden- 
 tally picks up " Mr. Shelley's atheistical poem," as the book- 
 stall advertisement called it ; soon afterward he obtains most of 
 Shelley's writings and three volumes of Keats's, although the 
 local booksellers then hardly knew these poets' names ; Shelley 
 and Keats came to Browning, as he said, " like two nightin- 
 gales singing together in a May night," and they had an im- 
 portant influence on the development of his genius ; he long 
 regarded Shelley as the greatest poet of his age, if not of any 
 age; for two years after reading " Queen Mab " Browning 
 becomes " a professing atheist and a practising vegetarian," 
 and he returns to a natural diet only when he sees that his 
 eyes are becoming weakened by his abstention ; his ' ' athe- 
 ism " soon cured itself. 
 
 As Browning's father is himself a scholar, he determines to 
 educate the boy at home, where he learns music, dancing, 
 riding, boxing, and fencing, and excels in the last three ac- 
 complishments ; in music he makes such advancement as to 
 write the airs for the songs he sung, and he remained all his 
 life a fine musical critic ; he afterward destroyed his boyish 
 musical compositions ; during his fourteenth and fifteenth 
 years he acquires a good knowledge of the French language 
 and literature under a native tutor, and in his eighteenth year 
 he attends, for a term or two, a Greek class at the University 
 of London ; he seems to have entirely neglected mathematics, 
 logic, and the other branches that train the thinking powers 
 studies that were " doubly requisite for a nature in which 
 the creative imagination was predominant over all the other 
 mental faculties ; " this omission doubtless accounts in great 
 part for the unfortunate involutions and inversions of his style ; 
 during his later teens his restlessness and aggressiveness be- 
 came intense, and he " gratuitously proclaimed himself every- 
 thing that he was and some things that he was not ; " one of 
 his dearest friends at this period was Alfred Domett, whom 
 
660 BROWNING 
 
 Browning afterward immortalized in " Waring" and also in 
 " The Guarding Angel ; " another was James Silverthorne, a 
 cousin on the mother's side, who is the youth referred to in 
 " May and Death ; " although Browning took a deep interest 
 in art and artists, his choice of poetry as a profession was ll a 
 foregone conclusion ; " his early art-work was confined to 
 modelling ; his father's suggestion that he study law was 
 promptly rejected, as was a virtual offer of a position in the 
 Bank of England ; he was never a regular churchgoer, but was 
 always very fond of the drama, often in youth walking from 
 Richmond to London to hear Edmund Kean. 
 
 Browning was generously supported in his poetical work by 
 his father, who bore the entire expense of publishing " Para- 
 celsus," " Sordello," and " Bells and Pomegranates " poems 
 that brought no financial return to their author ; as a prelim- 
 inary to his life-work in literature, Browning carefully digests 
 the whole of Johnson's Dictionary ; in 1833, when he is but 
 twenty, he writes " Pauline," which is published anonymously, 
 the expense being borne by an aunt ; this poem is favorably 
 reviewed by Browning's friend Fox in his Monthly Repository, 
 while another critic calls it " a piece of pure bewilderment ; " 
 in the winter of 1833-34 Browning visits St. Petersburg as the 
 secretary and guest of his friend Benckhausen, then the Rus- 
 sian Consul-General at London ; on his return he applies for 
 a position connected with a proposed mission to Persia, but 
 is unsuccessful; from 1834 to 1836 he contributes to the 
 Monthly Repositoty five poems, of which the first is now ex- 
 tant only in his " Personalia," while the other four were af- 
 terward incorporated, respectively, into " Pippa Passes," 
 "Bells and Pomegranates," and "James Lee's Wife ;" Brown- 
 ing completes " Paracelsus " in March, 1835, and, with Fox's 
 aid, finds a publisher ; the theme of " Paracelsus" was sug- 
 gested to Browning by Count Ripart Monclar (" Amedee"), 
 a warm friend of his, who was then in London acting as the 
 private agent of the royal French exiles then sojourning in 
 
BROWNING 66 1 
 
 England; "Paracelsus" is called "rubbish" by a critic in 
 the Athenaum, but is warmly defended by John Forster in the 
 Examiner a service that results in the formation of a lasting 
 .friendship between Browning and Forster; about 1835 the 
 poet's father removes from Camberwell to a house in Hatcham, 
 where he finds more room for his library of 6,000 volumes, 
 and where Browning makes a pet of a garden toad, immortal- 
 ized in one of the poems of " Asolando ; " soon after the re- 
 moval to Hatcham Browning enters upon friendly relations 
 with Carlyle, and makes the acquaintance of Talfourd, Home, 
 Leigh Hunt, Proctor, Milnes, Dickens, Wordsworth, and 
 Landor, all of whom he meets frequently at dinner at the 
 homes of Talfourd, Fox, and Macready ; at these dinners new 
 plays and poems often had their first reading ; in December, 
 1835, Browning and Forster are entertained by Macready at 
 his country home at Elstree, and a warm friendship exists 
 thereafter between the actor and the poet ; while at Elstree 
 Browning meets Miss Hawprth, the " Eyebright " of " Sor- 
 dello," and the friend to whom were addressed some of the 
 best of his letters now extant ; at a dinner in Macready's 
 house May 26, 1836, where Wordsworth, Talfourd, Landor, 
 and Miss Mitford are present, Macready suggests to Browning 
 the composition of a drama; the result is his " Strafford," 
 which was presented by Macready and his company at the 
 Coven t Garden Theatre May i, 1837, and had a short but 
 successful course ; it had been published during the previous 
 April by Longman, and was the first of Browning's works for 
 whose publication he did not pay ; at this period he is de- 
 scribed by a friend as "just a trifle of a dandy, addicted to 
 lemon-colored kid gloves and such things;" he works at 
 " Sordello " during the remainder of 1837 and, in the spring 
 of 1838, starts on his first journey to Italy ; landing at Trieste, 
 he visits Venice, Treviso, Bassano, Asolo, Vicenza, Padua, 
 Verona, and then Trent, Innspriick, Munich, Salzburg, Frank- 
 fort, Mayence, going thence down the Rhine to Cologne and 
 
662 BROWNING 
 
 back to London by way of Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege, and Ant- 
 werp; while at Trieste he wrote "How they Brought the 
 Good News from Ghent to Aix " (in pencil on the cover of a 
 book) and " Home Thoughts by the Sea; " the impressions 
 received during this tour at Asolo and at Venice appeared 
 later in " Pippa Passes " and " In a Gondola." 
 
 In 1839 Browning first meets the old boyhood school-friend 
 of his father, Mr. Kenyon, at whose home he frequently met 
 Wordsworth thereafter, and who was to have a peculiar rela- 
 tion to the Brownings' future career; in 1840 he publishes 
 "Sordello," which was longer in preparation than any other 
 of his poems ; Browning afterward declared that in writing 
 " Sordello " his " stress had lain on the incidents in the de- 
 velopment of a soul, little else being, to his mind, worthy of 
 study; " the undue condensation of thought in " Sordello," 
 and its consequent obscurity, are due largely to a criticism 
 made on his " Paracelsus " by John Sterling and repeated by 
 Miss Haworth to Browning ; he seems to have taken the crit- 
 icism too seriously ; in 1841 " Pippa Passes " appears as the 
 first of a series of cheap pamphlets published by Moxon un- 
 der the title of " Bells and Pomegranates" a title that 
 Browning condescended to explain in the last number as " a 
 most familiar patristic phrase for a mixture of poetry with 
 thought, or of faith with good works; " the other poems of 
 Browning published under the title " Bells and Pomegranates," 
 with their respective dates, are as follows : " King Victor and 
 King Charles," 1842 ; " Dramatic Lyrics," 1842, including 
 the " Cavalier Tunes," " Marching Along," " Give a Rouse," 
 1 < Boots and Saddles," originally called "My Wife Ger- 
 trude," and " Italy and France," "Camp and Cloister," "In 
 a Gondola/' "Artemis Prologizes," "Waring," "Queen 
 Worship," "Madhouse Cells," "Through the Metidja to 
 Abd-el-Kadr, " and " The Pied Piper of Hamelin ; " " The 
 Return of the Druses," 1843 ; "A Blot on the 'Scutcheon," 
 1843; " Colombe's Birthday," 1844; " Dramatic Romances 
 
BROWNING 663 
 
 and Lyrics," including " How they Brought the Good News 
 from Ghent to Aix," " Pictor Ignotus" " Italy in England," 
 " England in Italy," "The Lost Leader," "The Lost Mis- 
 tress," "Home Thoughts from Abroad," "The Tomb at 
 St. Praxed's," "Garden Fancies," "France and Spain," 
 "The Flight of the Duchess," "Earth's Immortalities," the 
 song " Nay, But You Who Do Not Love Her," " The Boy 
 and the Angel," " Night and Morning," " Claret and To- 
 kay," "Saul," "Time's Revenges," and "The Glove;" 
 " Luria, a Soul's Tragedy," 1846 ; " A Blot on the 'Scutch- 
 eon " was written in fifteen days for Macready, who meant to 
 play a principal part in the drama when produced ; from a 
 statement made by Browning forty years later it now appears 
 that, owing either to Macready's jealousy or to his financial 
 straits, the play was not fairly staged or well treated ; the 
 result was a severance of the friendship between Browning and 
 Macready ; a letter written to John Forster about this time 
 expressing his " almost passionate admiration " for " A Blot 
 on the 'Scutcheon," was withheld from Browning and from 
 the public by Forster for thirty years ; " Colombe's Birth- 
 day " was played with fair success in 1853; four of the 
 "Dramatic Lyrics" had been published previously in the 
 Monthly Repository and six of the " Dramatic Lyrics and 
 Romances " in Hood 's Magazine ', for the sake of financial aid 
 to Hood, then in his last illness ; Browning never afterward 
 wrote for the magazines except from philanthropic motives, as 
 when he published " Herve Riel " in the Cornhill Magazine 
 in 1870 for the benefit of the sufferers in the Franco-Prussian 
 War ; he has recorded of " Artemis Prologizes " that " it was 
 composed much against my endeavor, while in bed with a 
 fever;" "Christina," originally called "Queen Worship," 
 was dedicated to the Spanish Queen ; " The Pied Piper of 
 Hamelin" and "The Cardinal and the Dog" were written 
 to amuse Willie, the child of Macready, who was then con- 
 fined to the house with illness, and who undertook to " il- 
 
664 BROWNING 
 
 lustrate " these poems for Browning; "The Lost Leader" 
 expressed Browning's sentiments at the time about what he 
 considered to be Wordsworth's "abandonment of liberalism 
 at an unlucky juncture," although he afterward referred to the 
 poem " with something of shame and contrition." 
 
 In the autumn of 1844 Browning starts again for Italy, sail- 
 ing to Naples and travelling thence to Rome ; on his return 
 from Rome he calls on Trelawney at Leghorn, and in the fol- 
 lowing year he records some reminiscences of this tour in his 
 " Englishman in Italy ; " his own and his father's friend, John 
 Kenyon, was a cousin of Elizabeth Barrett, and he had fre- 
 quently spoken to the Brownings of her and had presented 
 them with copies of her poems; on Browning's return from 
 Italy, in 1844, he expresses such admiration for her "Lady 
 Geraldine's Courtship " that Kenyon begs him to write to the 
 author andtoexpress to her personally his appreciation, adding, 
 " My cousin is a great invalid, and sees no one, but great souls 
 jump at sympathy; " the result is the beginning of Brown- 
 ing's correspondence with Miss Barrett ; after a few months, 
 against her own inclinations, he prevails upon her to allow 
 him to visit her, although she calls herself " only a weed, fit for 
 the ground and darkness; " the visit seals Browning's matri- 
 monial fate : love succeeds to pity, and, after persistently re- 
 peating a proposition of marriage, he is accepted on the con- 
 dition that she regain her health ; the two poets meet three 
 times a week, but the visits are unknown beyond the two 
 families and Mr. Kenyon ; late in the summer of 1846 Miss 
 Barrett, who had partially recovered, was assured by her phy- 
 sician that a more complete recovery depended on her remov- 
 al to a warmer climate ; her father, doubtless believing her 
 incurable, refused to permit her to go south, and she conse- 
 quently broke with him and her family and was married to 
 Browning in strict privacy on the i2th of September, 1846, 
 at St. Pancras Church, London, without either the knowledge 
 or the consent of her father ; at this time Browning, though 
 
BROWNING 665 
 
 thirty-four years of age, expressed to Miss Barrett a will- 
 ingness to render himself more eligible as a husband by 
 studying for the bar, but she insisted that he continue to de- 
 vote himself to literature ; for a few days the husband and wife 
 return, respectively, to their own homes, and on the evening 
 of September 191!! they sail secretly for Paris, by way of Havre, 
 accompanied by Mrs. Browning's maid and her immortal dog, 
 " Flush; " Mrs. Browning had been healthy as a child, but 
 had injured her spine by a fall in her thirteenth year ; Brown- 
 ing's family are at first much disturbed by his marriage to such 
 an invalid, but they soon welcome her to their hearts and 
 homes ; her own father remains unforgiving and unreconciled 
 till his death ; in Paris the Brownings meet Mrs. Jameson, 
 who goes with them to Genoa, whence they go, soon, to Pisa 
 and settle there for the winter ; as Browning destroyed most 
 of his letters to his family shortly before his death, the details 
 of their early married life are unknown, except so far as may 
 be gleaned from Mrs. Browning's letters to Miss Mitford, to 
 whom she writes from Paris: " He has drawn me back to 
 life and hope again when I had done with both." 
 
 They leave Pisa in April, 1847, for Florence, where they first 
 spend five days with the monks of Vallombrosa, and then 
 establish themselves in the city, where they enter into close 
 social relations with Powers, the American sculptor ; during 
 the winter of 1847-48 they occupy apartments in the Palazzo 
 Pitti at Florence, just opposite the Pitti Palace ; early in 
 1848 Browning is severely ill, and refuses to consult a phy- 
 sician, but, during a chance call, Father Prout prescribes for 
 him and restores him to health ; in the summer of 1848 the 
 Brownings take and permanently furnish " six beautiful rooms 
 and a kitchen " in the Guidi Palace, opposite the church of 
 San Felice; in July, 1848, Mrs. Browning reports herself 
 "quite well again and strong;" during this summer they 
 sojourn briefly at Fano and at Ancona ; on March 9, 1849, 
 Browning's son is born, just at the time of the sudden death 
 
666 BROWNING 
 
 of the poet's mother, to whom he had remained passionately 
 attached from his infancy; the shock nearly undermines his 
 health, and, with his wife, he seeks recuperation in a tour along 
 the coast to Spezzia and thence to the Baths of Lucca, where 
 they remain till October ; at Lucca Mrs. Browning is " able to 
 climb the hills with Robert and help him lose himself in the 
 forests ; " they return to Florence late in the autumn of 1849, 
 and live very quietly " retreated from the advances of the 
 English .society here;" in the summer of 1850 they visit 
 Venice, which Mrs. Browning finds "celestial" and "inef- 
 fable," but the climate proves bad for Browning, and they re- 
 main but a few weeks ; during 1850 they are on intimate 
 terms with Margaret Fuller Ossoli, who is at their house daily 
 till she sails on her fatal homeward voyage ; in the summer of 
 1851 they return for the first time since their marriage to 
 London, where Browning commemorates his marriage by 
 kissing the paving-stones in front of St. Pancras Church ; 
 Mrs. Browning's father refuses to see either her or her child ; 
 in the autumn of 1851 they go to Paris in company with Car- 
 lyle, and settle at 138 Avenue des Champs- Ely sees, where 
 Carlyle frequently visits them ; at this period Browning is of 
 much service to Carlyle, as the Scotchman did not under- 
 stand French ; while in Paris the Brownings see much of 
 George Sand, and have Beranger for a near neighbor ; during 
 this winter they also meet Joseph Milsand, who commends 
 Browning's poetry in the Revue des Deux Mondes ; he after- 
 ward becomes one of Browning's warmest friends, and is a 
 frequent visitor at the poet's apartments ; the first reprint of 
 " Sordello," in 1863, was dedicated to Milsand, as were 
 "Parleyings with Certain People," published in 1867, within 
 a year after Milsand's death ; in December, 1848, Browning 
 had issued new editions of " Paracelsus " and the " Bells and 
 Pomegranates" poems ; while in Florence in 1850 he wrote 
 "Christmas Eve and Easter Day," and while at Paris, in 
 December, 1851, his essay on Shelley, in which he justifies 
 
BROWNING 667 
 
 that poet's life and character as he saw them then ; this essay 
 was largely based on twenty-five supposed letters of Shelley, 
 soon afterward discovered to be spurious. 
 
 In the summer of 1852 the Brownings return to London, 
 and lodge at 58 Welbeck Street; about this time the poet first 
 comes into close relations with D. G. Rossetti, who had long 
 been an admirer of his poetry ; during the winter of 1852-53 
 the Brownings are again at Florence in Casa Guidi, and there, 
 early in 1853, they are rejoiced by the news that " Colombe's 
 Birthday" has been successfully produced in London; the 
 summer of 1853 is passed at Lucca, where they meet Story, 
 the American sculptor and poet, between whose family and 
 themselves an intimate friendship exists thereafter ; while at 
 Lucca during this summer Browning writes " In a Balcony," 
 " By the Fireside," and some of the " Men and Women; " 
 he also entertains Lord Lytton there for a fortnight ; in the 
 autumn of 1853 the Brownings make their first visit to Rome, 
 where they lodge at 43 Via Bocca di Leone, in rooms secured 
 for them by the Storys ; at Rome they meet Fanny Kernble, 
 Thackeray, Mrs. Sartoris, and Lockhart, and Browning's 
 portrait is painted by Fisher; they leave Rome early in the 
 spring of 1854, on account of the ill health of their child, and 
 return to Florence ; they seem to have remained in Florence 
 till the spring or early summer of 1855, when they returned 
 again to London, taking rooms at 13 Dorset Street, Poland 
 Square; at these rooms, on the 27th of September, 1855, 
 Tennyson reads his new poem " Maud " to Mrs. Browning, 
 while Rossetti, the only other listener, makes his now famous 
 pen-and-ink drawing of Tennyson ; in 1855 Rossetti painted 
 Browning's portrait ; during this summer the Brownings visit 
 Ruskin at Denmark Hill, and see his Turner pictures ; at 
 these London rooms, in September, 1854, Browning writes 
 "One Word More " and perhaps some of the fifty poems 
 called " Men and Women," which he published in two vol- 
 umes late in 1855 ; he goes, with his family, to Paris again 
 
668 BROWNING 
 
 for the winter of 1855-56 ; his sister goes with them, and they 
 all see much of Lady Elgin during the winter ; during this 
 winter Mrs. Browning wrote " Aurora Leigh," scribbling the 
 verses on scraps of paper wherever she happened to be, and 
 hiding them in the folds of her dress if she was interrupted. 
 
 On the death of their mutual friend Kenyon, in December, 
 1856, the Brownings received from his estate, jointly, 10,- 
 ooo guineas, though they received nothing from the estate of 
 Mrs. Browning's father, who died about the same time ; dur- 
 ing 1857 Mrs. Browning begins her regular correspondence 
 with her husband's sister, which has since become so valuable 
 as biographical material because of the destruction of Brown- 
 ing's own letters ; the winter of 1856-57 seems to have been 
 passed at Rome and the following summer again at the Baths 
 of Lucca, in company with Lytton ; about this time arose the 
 well-known difference between Browning and his wife in refer- 
 ence to spiritualism a kindly disagreement, which gave rise, 
 eventually, to his poem, "Sludge, the Medium;" in the 
 summer of 1858 they are at Havre with Browning's sister and 
 father ; during the winter and spring following they seem to 
 have been at Florence and Rome; in July, 1859, they are at 
 or near S^ena, where the Storysare their neighbors, and where 
 Browning becomes a kind of guardian to Walter Savage Lan- 
 dor, who had found life with his family at Fiesole " unendur- 
 able ; " Lander's friends in England send to Browning, annu- 
 ally thereafter, enough to support the old " lion," and he is 
 placed in apartments next door to the Casa Guidi home in 
 Florence, in a house kept by two former servants of the Brown- 
 ings, who had married and established themselves there ; about 
 this time the poet forms a close friendship with Leighton, the 
 artist; the Brownings spend the winter of 1859-60 in Rome, 
 where he gives much time to modelling in clay; both he and 
 his wife are much affected at this period by the indifference 
 of the English public to his poetry, while they are encouraged 
 by the appreciation shown in America ; during the winter of 
 
 
BROWNING 669 
 
 1859-60 he obtains, through the aid of two artist friends, a 
 close insight into the popular and picturesque aspects of Roman 
 life, and comes much under the influence of the Storys ; dur- 
 ing this winter in Rome he also dines, by invitation, with the 
 Prince of Wales, and meets Cardinal Manning ; the Brown- 
 ings are again at Siena during the summer of 1860 and at 
 Rome during the following autumn ; while in Rome at this 
 time Mrs. Browning's health is seriously affected by the sudden 
 death of her sister, especially as telegrams concerning her sis- 
 ter's illness had been intercepted by the Government because 
 the poets were suspected of liberal tendencies ; they return to 
 Florence late in 1861, and Mrs. Browning dies there suddenly 
 and painlessly on June 2Qth of that year ; she had been suffer- 
 ing from a slight pulmonary weakness, but her death seems to 
 have been directly due to the shock caused by the death of 
 Cavour, whom she almost worshipped as the redeemer of Italy; 
 Browning is greatly aided at this time of trial by Miss Isa 
 Blagden, herself an author of some note, whose beautiful 
 home in Florence was long the centre of English society there ; 
 he spends at her home the month following his wife's death, 
 and then decides permanently to abandon "housekeeping," 
 saying, " My root is taken ; " late in July, 1861, accompanied 
 by Miss Blagden and his son, he leaves Florence for Paris, 
 where he resides for a while at 1 5 1 rue de Grenelle St. Ger- 
 main ; he then spends two months at St. Enogat, near Dinard, 
 with his father and sister ; thence he goes to London, where, 
 after a few months of boarding, he decides that the son must 
 have a home, and so sends to Florence for his furniture, and 
 establishes himself at a house in Warwick Crescent, near the 
 home of his wife's sister ; he dislikes London intensely at first, 
 and remains there only for his son's sake, always hoping event- 
 ually to return to Italy, where he wished to spend his last 
 days ; at this period he passes his evenings with Mrs. Brown- 
 ing's sister, a philanthropist, for whom he writes his poem 
 " The Twins " (republished in 1855 in Men and Women "), 
 
6/0 BROWNING 
 
 to be used in her " Plea for the Ragged Schools of London ; " 
 he spends the summer of 1862 at Cambo and Biarritz, among 
 the Pyrenees, where he has, as he says, ' ' a great read at Eu- 
 ripides, the only book I brought with me," and where he 
 plans " The Ring and the Book," besides writing parts of 
 " Dramatis Persona " and " In a Balcony; " at this time he 
 indignantly repulses several propositions by people who wish 
 to write biographies of Mrs. Browning, and even threatens 
 legal proceedings to prevent them from publishing her letters ; 
 during 1863 Browning publishes a three-volume edition of his 
 works, including " Sordello " but omitting "Pauline;" in 
 November, 1862, B. W. Procter and John Forster had pub- 
 lished a volume of selections from his poems as a tribute from 
 " two friends," in the preface of which they referred to him 
 as " among the few great poets of the century ; " Browning 
 repays his .poet-friend Procter, during Procter's old age and 
 complete deafness, by visiting him weekly with his son; Brown- 
 ing spends rthe summers of 1864 and 1865 at St. Marie, near 
 Pornic in illrittany ; his window at his Pornic lodgings be- 
 comes " tl doorway " of the poem "James Lee's Wife; " 
 on the evening of February 12, 1864, he meets Tennyson, 
 Gladstone, and several other eminent men at a dinner party 
 given by Francis Palgrave in his home in Regent's Park ; dur- 
 ing this evening Browning signs his will, making Tennyson 
 and Palgrave witnesses to that instrument ; about this time, 
 speaking of the neglect of himself and his works by the Eng- 
 lish public for the previous twenty-five years, Browning writes 
 to a friend: "As I begun, so I shall end taking my own 
 course, pleasing myself, or aiming at doing so, and thereby, I 
 hope, pleasing God. ... I never did otherwise ; I never 
 had any fear as to what I did going utterly to the bad hence, 
 in collected editions, I always repeated everything, smallest 
 and greatest;" during the winter of 1866 he again meets 
 Carlyle ; after the death of Browning's father, on June 14, 
 1866, the poet's sister becomes a member of his household 
 
BROWNING 671 
 
 and his inseparable companion ; they spend the summer of 
 1866 at St. Malo and LeCroisic, the scene of "Herve Kiel ; " 
 in June, 1867, Oxford confers on Browning the degree of 
 A.M. (" hardly given since Dr. Johnson's time, except to kings 
 and royal personages") and in the following December he 
 is made an honorary fellow of Balliol College ; in 1873, when 
 the lord rectorship of St. Andrew's University becomes vacant 
 by the death of J. S. Mill, it is tendered to Browning, but 
 he declines the honor ; he spends the summer of 1867 again 
 at Le Croisic ; in the summer of 1868, after visiting several 
 French watering-places, he settles, with his family, at Au- 
 dierne near Finisterre in Brittany. 
 
 In the autumn of 1868 Smith & Elder publish a'six-volume 
 edition of his works and in the following winter the first two 
 volumes of " The Ring and the Book " a poem that Brown- 
 ing always speaks of in his letters as " my murder poem ; " in 
 the spring of 1869 the third and fourth volumes of "The 
 Ring and the Book ' ' appear, and at last Browning comes 
 into his own, and is fully recognized by the EngJsh public ; 
 the Athenaum called " The Ring and the Book ' " the most 
 precious and profound spiritual treasure that EngUnd has pro- 
 duced since the days of Shakespeare ; " the main story of the 
 poem is founded on fact ; Browning found the tale in an old 
 manuscript in a bookstall at Florence shortly before his wife's 
 death, and read it carefully eight times before putting the story 
 into verse ; he worked on the poem from 1864 to 1869 ; Pom- 
 pilia, in " The Ring and the Book," reflects in many ways 
 the character of Mrs. Browning ; from 1869 to 1871 Brown- 
 ing publishes nothing ; in April, 1870, he writes the sonnet 
 " Helen's Tower," in memory of Lord Dufferin's mother 
 a poem published in the Pall Mall Gazette in 1883 ; in the 
 summer of 1869, with his sister and his son, he joins the Storys 
 in a tour through Scotland; the summer of 1870 finds them 
 again in a fishing village of Brittany St. Aubin, whence the 
 exigencies of the Franco-Prussian War soon compel them to re- 
 
6/2 BROWNING 
 
 turn hastily, taking a cattle-boat by night from Honfleur ; in 
 March, 1871, Browning writes " Herve Riel," and sells it to 
 the Cornhill Magazine for 100 guineas for the benefit of the 
 French sufferers in the war ; in proposing this sale, he writes 
 to his publishers concerning " Herve Riel," "I like it better 
 than most things I have done of late; " in August, 1871, he 
 publishes " Balaustion's Adventure," and in the December 
 following "Prince Hohenstiel Schwangau," which had been 
 written in Scotland; fourteen hundred copies of "Prince 
 Hohenstiel Schwangau " were sold within five days after pub- 
 lication and before any review of the poem had appeared ; 
 twenty-five hundred copies of " Balaustion's Adventure " were 
 sold within the first five months. 
 
 In the spring of 1872 Browning publishes, with some mis- 
 givings, " Fifine at the Fair " a poem which his biographer 
 later calls "a piece of perplexing cynicism, . . . froth 
 thrown up by Browning's poetic imagination during the 
 prolonged simmering which was to leave it clearer; " there 
 seems to be no ground for attributing to Browning the senti- 
 ments ascribed to the hero in " Fifine at the Fair ; " his real 
 attitude toward questions of this kind is shown by the fact 
 that he withdrew the admiration of forty years from Shelley 
 when he learned that that poet had been heartless toward his 
 first wife. 
 
 While at St. Aubin again, in the summer of 1872, Brown- 
 ing meets Anne Thackeray Ritchie, who suggests to him a 
 title for the poem for which he was then gathering materials 
 '* The Red Cotton Night-Cap Country ; " he began this poem 
 late in the winter of 1872, and finished it in the early autumn 
 of 1873, just before going again to St. Aubin ; for a time be- 
 tween 1870 and 1880 he enters into " the fashionable routine 
 of country-house visiting," but he is most interested in the 
 musical art, attending " every important concert of the Lon- 
 don season" and sacrificing all other engagements to these; 
 his frequent companion on these occasions was Mrs. Egerton- 
 
BROWNING 6/3 
 
 Smith, the " A. E. S." of the poem " La Saiziaz" an ac- 
 complished musician, whom he had known in Italy ; with 
 her death, in 1877, he ceased to pay attention to music; in 
 the summer of 1874, at the suggestion of Mrs. Smith, the 
 Brownings unite with her in a joint housekeeping scheme at 
 Mers near Freport on the French coast ; they follow the same 
 plan in 1875 at Villers, in 1876 at the Isle of Arran, and in 
 1877 at a house called " La Saiziaz," near Geneva. 
 
 During the autumn of 1874 Browning works on " Aris- 
 tophanes' Apology," writing at Mers and "living with the 
 great Greek ; " it is a strange fact that, with all his success 
 in revealing the spirit of Aristophanes and Euripides, he uni- 
 formly refused to regard the great Greek writers as models of 
 literary style ; while at Villers, in 1875, he corrects the proofs 
 of " The Inn Album," which is published in the following 
 November ; in the autumn of 1876 he has completed " Pac- 
 chiarotto ; " during his later years he makes few visits except 
 to Oxford and Cambridge, where he occasionally sojourned, es- 
 pecially at Balliol College, till the end of his life ; at Oxford 
 he comes into close touch with Jowett, Lord Coleridge, and 
 Matthew Arnold ; in 1875 he is unanimously nominated lord 
 rector of the University of Glasgow, and in 1877 he is again 
 tendered the lord rectorship of St. Andrews, but he declines 
 both honors, perhaps because he was never inclined to public 
 speaking ; while at La Saiziaz, in August, 1877, he is greatly 
 shocked by the sudden death of Mrs. Smith " a moral thun- 
 derbolt " and the experience finds expression in the poem 
 " La Saiziaz" written soon afterward and published in the 
 summer of 1878 with " Two Poets of the Croisic ; " this 
 poem best expresses Browning's "hope of immortality;" 
 the events in "Two Poets of the Croisic" are strictly his- 
 torical. 
 
 In August, 1878, Browning and his sister start on their 
 long-contemplated visit to Italy ; they go by way of the 
 Spliigen, and spend some time at a hotel near the summit, 
 43 
 
6/4 BROWNING 
 
 where he works with unusual rapidity, writing " Ivan Ivano- 
 vitch " and several other of his " Dramatic Idylls; " they 
 go thence to Asolo, stopping briefly at Como and Verona ; 
 after a month at Asolo they go to Venice, where they take 
 lodgings in the Albergo del Universe, or Palazzo Brandolin- 
 Rota on the shady side of the Grand Canal a house that be- 
 came their annual autumn resting-place for seven years there- 
 after ; the autumns of 1881 and 1882 are spent at Saint Pierre 
 la Chartreuse and those of 1883 and 1885 at Grissoney Saint 
 Jean ; in the autumn of 1880 Mrs. Arthur Bronson, an Amer- 
 ican friend of the Brownings, places at their disposal a suite 
 of rooms in the Palazzo Giustiniani Recanati, which formed 
 a supplement to her own house ; they keep house here again 
 in 1885 ; in 1888 Mrs. Bronson gives to them apartments in 
 her own house a service commemorated by Browning in the 
 preface to " Asolando ; " in the salon of Mrs. Bronson the 
 Brownings frequently meet Don Carlos and his family, Prince 
 and Princess Iturbide, the Princess of Montenegro, Prince and 
 Princess Metternich, Sir Henry and Lady Layard, and other 
 persons of note ; in 1879 Browning publishes his "Dramatic 
 Lyrics," which are received " with a thrill of suppressed ad- 
 miration ; " this volume included " Earth's Immortalities," 
 " The Boy and the Angel," " Meeting at Night," " Parting 
 at Morning," " Saul," and " Time's Revenges ;" in 1880 
 he publishes a second series of selections from his works. 
 
 In the summer of 1881 Dr. (then Mr.) Furnival and Miss 
 Hickey organize the London Browning Society, with the 
 poet's knowledge but without approval or encouragement from 
 him ; he had himself long been president of the Shakespeare 
 Society and a member of the Wordsworth Society ; in No- 
 vember, 1883, he writes his sonnet to Goldoni, actually scrib- 
 bling it off while a messenger is waiting for it; in 1884 he 
 again declines an invitation for the lord rectorship of St. An- 
 drew's, receives the degree of LL.D. from the University of 
 Edinburgh, and is made honorary president of the Associated 
 
BROWNING 675 
 
 Societies of Edinburgh ; in 1884 he writes the sonnets " The 
 Founder of the Feast" and "The Names" and in 1886 
 " Why I am a Liberal ; " in 1885 his son visits Italy for the 
 first time since his mother's death, and is so charmed, as an 
 artist, with Venice that Browning decides to buy a home and 
 settle there permanently ; he bargains for the Palazzo Man- 
 zoni on the Grand Canal, but the contract is broken by friends 
 of the original owner ; at this time Browning writes : " I my- 
 self shall stick to London, which has been so eminently good 
 and gracious to me, so long as God permits; only, when the in- 
 evitable outrage of Time gets the better of my body (I shall not 
 believe in his reaching my soul and proper self), there will be 
 a capital retreat provided; " not long afterward his son buys 
 for the family the Rezzonico Palazzo, and so the " retreat" is 
 provided; the Brownings spend the summer of 1884 at St. 
 Moritz at the villa of an American friend, Mrs. Bloomfield 
 Moore ; in 1886, owing to the feeble health of Miss Brown- 
 ing, they go only as far as Llangollen, in Wales, where the 
 poet varies his usual London custom by attending regularly 
 the Sunday afternoon service in the little parish church ; a 
 memorial tablet has since been placed on the spot where he 
 worshipped ; the death of Browning's most intimate friend, 
 Joseph Milsand, in 1888, and the successive demise, about this 
 time, of Miss Haworth, Dickens, Procter, John Forster, Car- 
 lyle, Lord Houghton, and others deeply affects him ; he 
 greatly reverenced Carlyle, often visited him during his last 
 days at Chelsea, and after his death defended him vigorously 
 against the charge of unkindness to his wife ; in the spring of 
 1886 Browning is made Corresponding Secretary of the Royal 
 Academy, and early in 1887 he publishes " Parleyings with 
 Certain Poets; " in June, 1887, he removes from Warwick 
 Crescent to De Vere Gardens to a house more sheltered, more 
 conveniently situated, and more modern in construction than 
 his former residence ; here his son is married in December, 
 1887, to a New York lady, and here in the large rooms the 
 
676 BROWNING 
 
 poet arranges the fine specimens of antique furniture that he 
 had been gathering for years. 
 
 In the summer of 1887, with his sister, he is again the guest 
 of Mrs. Moore at St. Moritz ; one of his last occupations during 
 his last winter in London was his arrangement of his father's 
 library of 6,000 volumes and his own library in the new cases 
 at the new home ; he still continues to dine out, to visit 
 every art exhibition, and to answer all correspondents, writing 
 daily till his fingers ache; in December, 1887, he writes 
 " Rosny," " Beatrice Signori," " Flute Music," and two or 
 three of the " Bad Dreams; " in 1888 he begins revising his 
 poems for the last and now complete edition, the last volume 
 of which was not published till 1889 ; the greatest change 
 made in any poem at this time was in " Pauline," which he 
 then calls " the only poem which makes me out youngish ; " 
 in August, 1888, he joins his son at Priziero, near Feltre, in 
 Italy a place that he calls " the most beautiful that I was 
 ever resident in ; " soon afterward they all go to the palace 
 home in Venice, which the son had fitted up in excellent 
 style ; before and during this journey to Italy Browning was 
 seriously ill, but he recovered before reaching Venice ; he re- 
 turns to London late in the autumn of 1888, and makes his an- 
 nual visit to Oxford ; in August, 1889, he starts on his last trip 
 to Venice, stopping for several weeks at Asolo, as the guest 
 again of his American friend, Mrs. Bronson ; before leaving 
 Asolo he enters into negotiations for the purchase of a piece 
 of land belonging to the old castle, where he proposes to 
 build a summer home to be christened " Pippa Passes ; " the 
 negotiations are delayed by political considerations, and are 
 completed only on the day of the poet's death ; he reaches 
 Venice late in October ; early in November he takes a severe 
 cold while taking his daily walk on the Lido ; he dies at the 
 Rezzonico Palazzo, December 12, 1889 ; at the suggestion of 
 the Dean of Westminster, the poet's body is sent for inter- 
 ment in Westminster Abbey, though not till after a very im- 
 
BROWNING 677 
 
 posing funeral service conducted by the city of Venice ; later, 
 a bronze tablet was placed by that city in the palace where 
 Browning died ; besides the name and date of birth and death, 
 this tablet bears these lines from one of his poems : 
 
 " Open my heart, and you will see 
 Graved inside of it, * Italy.'" 
 
 The city of Florence also marked with a tablet the house 
 where the Brownings lived during their residence in that 
 city ; " Asolando " was published on the day of Browning's 
 death. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON BROWNING. 
 
 Hutton, R. H., " Literary Essays." London, 1888, Macmillan, 
 
 188-240. 
 Dowden, E., "Transcripts and Studies." London, 1888, Kegan Paul, 
 
 Trench & Co., 474-525. 
 Bagehot, W., "Works." Hartford, 1889, Traveller's Insurance Co., 
 
 238-253. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 293-342. 
 Mabie, H. W., " Essays in Literary Interpretation." New York, 1892, 
 
 Dodd, Mead & Co., 99-137 and 191-239. 
 Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 
 
 Co., 191-259. 
 Saintsbury, G., "Corrected Impressions." New York, 1895, Dodd, 
 
 Mead & Co., 98-116. 
 
 Masson, D., " In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Whit- 
 taker, 297-329. 
 
 Birrell, A., " Obiter Dicta." New York, 1887, Scribner, 55-95. 
 Ritchie, A. T., " Records of Tennyson, Ruskin, and Browning." New 
 
 York, 1892, Harper, 129-190. 
 Corson, H., " Introduction to Browning." Boston, 1886, D. C. Heath 
 
 &Co. 
 Fawcett, E., " Agnosticism and Other Essays." Chicago, 1889, Belford, 
 
 Clark & Co., 106-147. 
 MacDonald, G. , " The Imagination and Other Essays." Boston, 1883, 
 
 Lothrop, 195-217. 
 McCrie, G., "The Religion of Our Literature." London, 1875, Hodder 
 
 & Stoughton, 69-109. 
 
678 BROWNING 
 
 Berdoe, E., " Browning's Message to His Time." New York, 1891, 
 
 Macmillan, v. index. 
 Burt, M. E., "Browning's Women." Chicago, 1897, C. H. Kerr & 
 
 Co., v. index. 
 Cooke, G. W., " A Guide-Book to the Poetry of Browning." Boston, 
 
 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
 
 Sharp, W., "Life of Robert Browning." London, 1890, Walter Scott. 
 Devey, J., "Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 376-421. 
 James, H., "Essays in London." New York, 1893, Harper, 222-229. 
 Wilson, F. M., "A Primer on Browning." London, 1891, Macmillan. 
 Wescott, B. F., " Essays in the History of Religious Thought." London, 
 
 1891, Macmillan, 253-276. 
 Revell, W. F. , " Browning's Criticism of Life." London, 1892, Swan, 
 
 Sonnenschein & Co., v. index. 
 Jones, H., " Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher. " New 
 
 York, 1891, Macmillan, v. index. 
 Woodberry, G. E., "Studies in Literature and Life." New York, 1891, 
 
 Houghton, Mifflin & Co. , 276-296. 
 Cooke, G. W., "Poets and Problems." Boston, 1886, Ticknor & Co., 
 
 271-388. 
 Burroughs, J., "Indoor Studies." Boston, 1893, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 239. 
 Alexander, W. J., " Introduction to the Poetry of Browning." Boston, 
 
 1889, Ginn. 
 Orr, Mrs. S., "Life and Letters of Robert Browning." New York, 
 
 1891, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., v. index. 
 Kingsland, W. G., " Robert Browning." London, 1890, F. W. Jarvis & 
 
 Son, v. index. 
 Friswell, J. H., " Modern Men of Letters." London, 1870, Hodder & 
 
 Stoughton, 119-131. 
 Howitt, Wm., " Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge. 
 Dawson, W. J., " The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1891, 
 
 Whittaker, 270-327. 
 Thome, W. H., "Modern Idols." Philadelphia, 1887, Lippincott, 
 
 21-48. 
 
 Mather, J. M., " Popular Studies, etc." London, 1892, Warne, 155-184. 
 Morley, J, "Studies in Literature." London, 1891, Macmillan, 255- 
 
 286. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., " The Victorian Age of English Literature." New York, 
 
 n. d., Tait, I : 218-226. 
 Harpers Magazine, 84: 832-855 (A. T. Ritchie). 
 
BROWNING 6/9 
 
 Poet Lore, 8:78-84 and 225-233 (W. G. Kingsland); 5:258-266 
 
 (W.J. Rolfe). 
 
 Century, 23 : 238-245 (S. A. Brooke) ; 23 : 189 (E. Gosse). 
 Poet Lore, 6: 225-238 (G. W. Cooke) ; 479-490 (W. G. Kingsland); 
 
 2: 19-26 (H. S. Pancoast); 6: 585-592 (L. A. Sherman); 4: 612- 
 
 616 (G. W. Cooke); 1:553-560 (H. S. Pancoast). 
 Contemporary Review, 57 : 141-152 (S. A. Brooke); 35 : 289-302 (Mrs. 
 
 S. Orr); 60: 70-81 (A. Lang). 
 
 Critic, 15 : 316-318 and 330 (R. H. Stoddard) ; 13 : 93 (A. S. Cook). 
 Andover Review, 8 : 131-153 (H. W. Mabie). 
 Nation, 53 : 92 (G. E. Woodberry) ; 22 : 49, 50 (H. James, Jr.). 
 Literary World (Boston), 21 : 25, 26 and 13 : 76-78 (F. J. Furnivall). 
 Academy, 39 : 247 (W. J. Rolfe) ; 23 : 213, 214 (J. A. Symonds). 
 Appleton's Magazine, 6 : 533-536 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Fortnightly Review, 16 : 478-490 (S. Colvin) ; u : 331-343 (J. Morley) ; 
 
 I : 548~55o(W. J. Courthope); 3 : 402-406 (B. Taylor). 
 Canadian Monthly, 2 : 285-287 (Goldwin Smith). 
 North American Review, 66 : 357-400 (J. R. Lowell). 
 Fraser's Magazine, 76: 518-530 (E. Dowden). 
 Good Words, 31 '87-93 ( R - H - Button). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Intense Vigor. " His genius is robust with vigor- 
 ous blood, and his tone has the cheeriness of intellectual 
 health. . . . His poetry is a tonic; it braces and invig- 
 orates. . . . The supple, nervous strength and swiftness 
 of the blank verse [in "Bishop Blougram's Apology "] is, in 
 its way, as fine as the qualities we have observed in the other 
 monologues: there is a splendid 'go' in it, a vast capacity 
 for business; the verse is literally alive with meaning and 
 packed with thought. ... * The Worst of It ' is thrill- 
 ingly intense and alive ; and the swift force and tremulous 
 eagerness of its very original rhythm and metre translate its 
 sense into sound with perfect fitness. . . . Mr. Brown- 
 ing's style is vital; his verse moves to the throbbing of 
 an inner organism, not to the pulsations of a machine." 
 John Addington Symonds. 
 
 "He is always masculine and vigorous. Original modern 
 
680 BROWNING 
 
 poetry is apt to be enervating, producing the effect of intel- 
 lectual luxury; or if, like Wordsworth's, it is as cool and 
 bright as morning dew, it carries us away from the world to 
 mountain solitudes and transcendental dreams. Mr. Brown- 
 ing's while it strains our intellect to the utmost, as all 
 really intellectual poetry must, and has none of the luxuriance 
 of fancy and wealth of sentiment which relaxes the fibre of the 
 mind keeps us still in a living world; not always the modern 
 world, very seldom, indeed, the world of modern England, 
 but still in contact with keen, quick, vigorous life." R. H. 
 Button. 
 
 " It is somewhat strange that a poet who can, upon occasion, 
 show such a fine feeling for rhythm and the music of words, 
 should so frequently set both at nought in preference for verses 
 which stun the ear with their rudeness never, though, without 
 imparting some sense of admiration for the vigor of the blow." 
 Richard Grant White. 
 
 1 ' What enchants is the speed, the glow, the distinctness, 
 the power of each well-placed touch." Andrew Lang. 
 
 "The chief attraction in Mr. Browning's poems is to be 
 found in the solid and vigorous thinking which characterizes 
 them and the life which they possess and, consequently, can 
 impart." M. D. Conway. 
 
 11 It would be most unjust, however, . . .to pass over 
 the dignity and splendor of the verse in many places, where 
 the intensity of the waiter's mood finds worthy embodiment in 
 a sustained gravity and vigor and finish of diction not to be 
 surpassed. . . . When all is said that can be said about 
 the violences which from time to time invade the poem, it 
 remains true that the complete work affects the reader most 
 powerfully with that wide unity of impressions which it is the 
 highest aim of dramatic art and perhaps of all art to pro- 
 duce." John Morley. 
 
 " The old fire flashes out, thirty years after, in ' Herve 
 Kiel,' another vigorous production." E. C. Stedman. 
 
BROWNING 68 1 
 
 " Mr. Browning had plenty to say on whatsoever subject he 
 took up; and had a fresh, original, vigorous manner of saying 
 it." George Saint sbury. 
 
 "Life is never life to him except in those hours when it 
 rises to a complete outpouring of itself. To live is to experi- 
 ence intensely. . . . The singular combination of great 
 intellectual range with passionate intensity of utterance which 
 characterizes Browning is explained by the indissoluble union 
 in which he holds thought and action." If. W. Mabie. 
 
 "It is the sea in its glory, the storm in its might, the 
 mountain in its towering splendor, the heavens in their un- 
 utterable depths, which made the style of Browning. 
 His poetry is like the strong and resistless force of a great river 
 carrying on its bosom mighty ships and many a smaller craft." 
 G. W. Cooke. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Fear death ? to feel the fog in my throat, 
 
 The mist in my face, 
 When the snows begin and the blasts denote 
 
 I am nearing the place, 
 The power of the night and the press of the storm, 
 
 The post of the foe ; 
 
 " I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, 
 
 And bade me creep past. 
 No ! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, 
 
 The heroes of old, 
 Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears 
 
 Of pain, darkness, and cold." Prospice. 
 
 " Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul more, 
 One task more declined, one more foot-path untrod, 
 One more devil's-triumph and sorrow for angels, 
 One wrong more to man, one more insult to God ! 
 Life's night begins : let him never come back to us ! 
 There would be doubt, hesitation, and pain ; 
 Forced praise on our part the glimmer of twilight, 
 Never glad confident morning again." The Lost Leader. 
 
682 BROWNING 
 
 " It is a He their priests, their Pope, 
 
 Their saints, their ... all they fear or hope 
 
 Are lies and lies there ! thro' my door 
 
 And ceiling, there ! and walls and floor, 
 
 There, lies, they lie, shall still be hurled, 
 
 Till spite of them I reach the world ! 
 
 No part in aught they hope or fear ! 
 
 No Heaven with them, no Hell, and here, 
 
 No Earth, not so much space as pens 
 
 My body in their worst of dens 
 
 But shall bear God and Man my cry : 
 
 Lies lies, again and still, they lie ! " 
 
 The Ring and the Book. 
 
 2. Analysis of Character Introspection. " This 
 ' endeavor is not to set men in action for the pleasure of seeing 
 them move, but to see and show, in their action and inaction 
 alike, the real impulses of their being ; to see how each soul 
 conceives of itself. . . . Suppose he is attracted by some 
 particular soul or by some particular act. The problem oc- 
 cupies him the more abstruse and entangled the more attrac- 
 tive to him it is; he winds his way into the heart of it, or, 
 we might better say, he picks to pieces the machinery. 
 ' Colombe's Birthday ' is mainly concerned with inward 
 rather than outward action ; in this the characters themselves, 
 what they are in their own souls, what they think of them- 
 selves and what others think of them, constitute the chief in- 
 terest. . . . It is a result of this purpose, in consonance 
 with this practice, that we get in Mr. Browning's works so 
 large a number of distinct human types and so great a variety 
 of surroundings in which they are placed. Only in Shake- 
 speare can we find anything like the same variety of distinct 
 human characters vital creations endowed with thoughtful 
 life. . . . The men and women who live and move in 
 that new world of his creation are as varied as life itself; they 
 are kings and beggars, saints and lovers, great captains, poets, 
 painters, musicians, priests and popes, Jews, gypsies and der- 
 
BROWNING 683 
 
 vishes, street-girls, princesses, dancers with the wicked witch- 
 ery of the daughter of Herodias, wives with the devotion of 
 the wife of Brutus, joyous girls and malevolent graybeards, 
 statesmen, cavaliers and soldiers of humanity, tyrants and 
 bigots, ancient sages and modern spiritualists, heretics, schol- 
 ars, scoundrels, devotees, rabbis, persons of quality and men 
 of low estate men and women as multiform as nature and 
 society has made them." -John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " His mission has been that of exploring those secret regions 
 which generate the forces whose outward phenomena it is for 
 the playwrights to illustrate. He has opened a new field for 
 the display of emotional power, founding, so to speak, a sub- 
 dramatic school of poetry, whose office is to follow the work- 
 ings of the mind, to discover the impalpable elements of which 
 human motives and passions are composed. . . . Brown- 
 ing, as the poet of psychology, escapes to that stronghold 
 whither, as I have said, science and materialism are not yet 
 prepared to follow him. . . . He has preferred to study 
 human hearts rather than the forms of nature. . . . Brown- 
 ing was the prophet of that reaction which holds that the 
 proper study of mankind is man. His effort, weak or able, 
 was at figure-painting in distinction from that of landscape or 
 still-life."^. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Mr. Browning is not a great dramatist, for in style he 
 always remains himself; but he is a great intellectual inter- 
 preter of human character. . . . He does enter into 
 character as a prelude to the excitement of conflict, but only 
 describes the conflict in order to illustrate the character. He 
 has the command of motives which is given by a constant 
 study of the secrets of the heart, either for saintly and mys- 
 tical or for worldly and selfish reasons. . .In the brill- 
 iancy of his descriptions of character he has no rival." R. 
 H. Hutton. 
 
 " The subtle genius of a poet whose mastery of psychology 
 is universally recognized has marvelous power of penetrating 
 
684 BROWNING 
 
 the secrets of natures widely dissimilar and of experiences 
 which have little in common save that they are a part of life. 
 We are irresistibly drawn to him, not only because 
 he gives us his view of things, the substance of his personal 
 life, but because he makes ourselves clear and comprehensible 
 to us. ... Only those who have carefully studied the 
 works ["Paracelsus," " Sordello," etc.] know what aston- 
 ishing power is embodied in them, what marvelous subtlety of 
 analysis, what masterly grouping and interplay of motives." 
 H. W. Mabie. 
 
 "We must look to the play itself [" Balaustion's Advent- 
 ure "] for an illustration of his . . . facility, to which 
 ' The Ring and the Book ' gave expression on so monumental 
 a scale, for penetrating to the springs of character ; . . . 
 and the use of ' Balaustion ' is to add to the outer record a 
 coherent and comprehensible version of the inner character 
 and motives." Sidney Colvin. 
 
 "Mr. Browning has interpreted every one of our emo- 
 tions, from divine love to human friendship, from the despair 
 of the soul to the depths of personal hatred." Andrew 
 Lang. 
 
 " A strong individuality often limits a man, but Browning 
 had with it so much imagination that he flung himself retain- 
 ing still his distinctive elements into a multitude of other 
 lives, in various places, and at various times in history. In 
 each of these he conceives himself, imagines all the fresh cir- 
 cumstances, all the new scenery, all the strange passions and 
 knowledge of each age around himself, and creates himself 
 afresh as modified by them. It is always Browning, then, who 
 writes. . . . Browning has excelled the rest in character- 
 making and in the multitude and variety of his characters. 
 Nevertheless, Browning always turns up in every character. 
 When his characters are men, a sudden turn confronts us in 
 them with which we are well acquainted. . . . The 
 women are more built up by intellectual analysis based on 
 
BROWNING 685 
 
 Browning's own emotion that is, a man's specialized emo- 
 tion than created at a single jet." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " He never seems to be telling us what he thinks and feels ; 
 but he puts before us some man, male or female, whose indi- 
 viduality soon becomes as clear and as absolute as our own. 
 The poet does not appear ; indeed, so wholly is he merged in 
 the creature of his own will that, as we hear that creature 
 speak, his creator is, for the time, completely forgotten." 
 Richard Grant White. 
 
 " [" The Ring and the Book" ] is a great psychological 
 poem, evidently written by Mr. Browning for the purpose of 
 elucidating the mysteries of fact and nature and of human ac- 
 tion. The incidents . . . afford the fullest scope to the 
 poet for the dissection of human passions and the removal of 
 the veil which interposes between the heart of man and the 
 outer world. . . . His greatest gift [is] that of the ca- 
 pacity to read human nature. ... In the dramatic fac- 
 ulty and power of psychological analysis his superiority over 
 his contemporaries is easily perceived." G. B. Smith. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " She had 
 
 A heart how shall I say ? too soon made glad, 
 Too easily impressed ; she liked whate'er 
 She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. 
 Sir, 't was all one ! My favor at her breast, 
 The dropping of the daylight in the West, 
 The bough of cherries some officious fool 
 Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule 
 She rode with 'round the terrace all and each 
 Would draw from her alike the approving speech, 
 Or blush, at least. She thanked men good ! but thanked 
 Somehow I do not know as if she ranked 
 My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name 
 With anybody's gift." My Last Duchess. 
 
686 BROWNING 
 
 " He took such cognizance of men and things ; 
 If any beat a horse, you felt he saw ; 
 If any cursed a woman, he took note ; 
 Yet stared at nobody, you stared at him, 
 And found, less to your pleasure than surprise, 
 He seemed to know you and expect as much." 
 
 How it Strikes a Contetiiporary. 
 
 " I drew them, fat and lean : then, folks at church, 
 From good old gossips waiting to confess 
 Their cribs of barrel-droppings, candle-ends, 
 To the breathless fellow at the altar-foot, 
 Fresh from his murder, safe and sitting there 
 With the little children round him in a row." 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 3. Inversion Obscurity Chaotic Sentence 
 Structure. " A more completely opaque medium than the 
 wording either of his own thoughts or of the author's thoughts 
 about him [in " Sordello " ] Talleyrand himself would 
 have failed to invent. . . . Mr. Browning rushes upon 
 you with a sort of intellectual douche, half stuns you with the 
 abruptness of the shock, repeats the application from a multi- 
 tude of swift various jets from unexpected points of the com- 
 pass, and leaves you at last giddy, and wondering where you 
 are; but with a vague sense that, were you properly prepared 
 beforehand, you would discern a real unity and power in this 
 intellectual water-spout, though its first descent only drenched 
 and bewildered your imagination. . . . As to the rela- 
 tion of the whole to the part, Mr. Browning's poems are not 
 so organized that the parts give you any high gratification till 
 you catch a view of the whole. . . . The wording [of 
 the " Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister "] . . . is neither 
 melodious nor even very lucid for its purpose ; and the parts 
 . are diminished images of the whole, and hence enig- 
 matic until the whole has been two or three times read. 
 The obscurity wherein Browning disguises his realism 
 
BROWNING 687 
 
 is but the semblance of imagination ; a mist through which 
 rugged details jut out, while the central truth is feebly to be 
 seen. . . . Where else is there in Browning, for what 
 comes near lyric fire, anything like that apostrophe which 
 ends the prologue to ' The Ring and the Book/ the first coup- 
 let of which has more of the ring of inspiration than anything 
 else in the whole range of his poems, though in the closing 
 lines he repasses into that over-compressed thought which 
 makes him at times so obscure." ft. H. Hutton. 
 
 "One half of ' Bordello ' and that, with Mr. Browning's 
 usual ill-luck, the first half is undoubtedly obscure. It is as 
 difficult to read as ' Endymion ' or the ' Revolt of Islam,' and 
 for the same reason : the author's lack of experience in the 
 art of composition." Augustine Birr ell. 
 
 " We come to no places in ' Sordello ' where we can rest 
 and dream or look up at the sky. Ideas, emotions, images, 
 analyses, descriptions, still come crowding in. There is too 
 much of everything ; we cannot see the wood for the trees. 
 . . . The obscurity of ' Sordello ' arises not so much 
 from peculiarities of style and the involved structure of occa- 
 sional sentences as from the unrelaxing demand which is made 
 throughout upon the intellectual and imaginative energy and 
 alertness of the reader. . . . There is not a line of the 
 poem that is not as full of matter as a line can be." Edward 
 Dow den. 
 
 11 What I have said of the woman's [Mrs. Browning] ob- 
 scurity, affectations, elisions, will apply to the man's with 
 his i'ths and o'ths, his dashes, breaks, halting measures, and 
 oracular exclamations that convey no dramatic meaning to 
 the reader. . . . Parodies on his style, thrown off as 
 burlesque, are more intelligible than much of his ' Dramatis 
 Personse.' Unlike Tennyson, he does not comprehend the 
 limits of a theme ; nor is he careful as to the relative impor- 
 tance of either themes or details ; his mind is so alert that its 
 minute turns of thought must be uttered ; he dwells with 
 
688 BROWNING 
 
 equal precision upon the meanest and grandest objects, and 
 laboriously jots down every point that occurs to him paren- 
 thesis within parenthesis until we have a tangle as intricate 
 as the lines drawn by an anemometer upon the recording sheet. 
 The poem is all zigzag, crisscross, at odds and ends ; and 
 though we come out right at last, strength and patience are 
 exhausted in mastering it. Apply the rule that nothing 
 should be told in verse which can be told in prose, and half 
 his measures would be condemned." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " In ' Paracelsus ' the difficulties were in the quantity and 
 quality of things ; in ' Sordello ' there is the additional dif- 
 ficulty of an impracticable style. In proportion to the depth 
 or novelty of thought, the poet has chosen to render the vehi- 
 cle difficult in which it is conveyed sometimes by erudite 
 elaboration of parenthesis within parenthesis and question 
 upon query sometimes by its levity, jaunty indifference, and 
 apparent contempt of everything sometimes it has an inter- 
 minable period or one the right end of which you cannot 
 find : a knotted serpent, which either has no discernible tail, 
 or has several, the ends of which are in the mouths of other 
 serpents or else flanking in the air sometimes it has a series 
 of the shortest possible periods, viz., of one word or of two 
 or three words. ' ' R. H. Home. 
 
 " The condensation of style which had marked Mr. Brown- 
 ing's previous work and which has marked his later, was here 
 ["Sordello"] in consequence of an unfortunate and most un- 
 necessary dread of verbosity, induced by a rash and foolish cri- 
 tique accentuated not infrequently into dislocation. 
 Mr. Browning is too much the reverse of obscure, he is only 
 too brilliant and subtle." John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " The first time you read many of his poems you make 
 scarcely any headway. You begin to question your own san- 
 ity and that of the poet. You have lurking doubts as to 
 whether you understand the English tongue. ... He 
 was truly the most obscure thinker that ever expressed himself 
 
BROWNING 689 
 
 in the English language. But his obscurity arises, not from 
 the obscurity of the thought, but from its overfulness. " 
 H. H. Boyesen. 
 
 "They [his thoughts] are twisted, entangled, and broken 
 up in a way that I do not like to call wilful, but which has 
 that air." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Ellipsis reigns supreme ; prepositions and relatives are 
 dispensed with ; nominatives and accusatives play hide and 
 seek 'round verbs ; we get lost in the maze of transpositions 
 and stumble over irritating and obscure parentheses." R. W. 
 Church. 
 
 11 There can be no doubt that to ' Sordello ' is chiefly at- 
 tributable the prevalent idea of Mr. Browning's obscurity as a 
 writer. . . . The reader of Mr. Browning must learn 
 first of all that he is one. of that class of writers whose finest 
 thoughts must be often read ' between the lines.' Sometimes 
 where a passage seems obscure one has only to pause and re- 
 flect what would be the tone in which a certain speech should 
 naturally be uttered to find the dark saying light up to one of 
 perhaps unusual simplicity." M. D. Conway. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " About that strangest, saddest, sweetest song 
 I, when a girl, heard in Kameiros once, 
 And, after, saved my life by ? Oh, so glad 
 To tell you my adventures ! Petale, 
 Phullis, Charope, Chrusion ! You must know, 
 This * after ' fell in that unhappy time 
 When poor reluctant Nikias, pushed by fate, 
 Went fluttering against Syracuse." 
 
 Balaustiorfs Adventure. 
 
 " Having and holding, till 
 I imprint her fast 
 On the void at last 
 As the sun whom he will 
 By the calotypist's skill 
 44 
 
690 BROWNING 
 
 11 Then if my heart's strength serve, 
 And through all and each 
 Of the veils I reach 
 To her soul and never swerve, 
 Knitting an iron nerve 
 
 " Command her soul to advance 
 
 And inform the shape 
 
 Which has made escape 
 And before my countenance 
 Answers me glance for glance 
 
 " I, still with a gesture fit 
 Of my hands that best 
 Do my soul's behest, 
 Pointing the power from it, 
 While myself do steadfast sit." Mesmerism. 
 
 " Its businesses in blood and blaze this year 
 But wile the hour away a pastime slight 
 Till he shall step upon the platform right ! 
 And, now thus much is settled, cast in rough, 
 Proved feasible, be counselled ! thought enough. 
 Slumber, Sordello ! any day will serve : 
 Were it a less digested plan ! how swerve 
 To-morrow ? " Sordello. 
 
 4. Fondness for Monologue. " We see also [in his 
 " Dramatic Lyrics "] the first formal beginning of the dramatic 
 monologue, which became, from the period of ' Dramatic 
 Lyrics ' onward, the staple form and special instrument of 
 the poet an instrument finely touched, at times, by other 
 performers, but of which he is the only Liszt. . . . In 
 1 Men and Women ' Mr. Browning's special instrument the 
 monologue is brought to perfection. Such monologues as 
 ' Andrea del Sarto ' or the ' Epistle of Karshish' never have 
 been and probably never will be surpassed, on their own 
 ground, after their own order. ... In 'Bishop Blou- 
 gram's Apology ' the monologue introduces a new element, 
 the casuistical. This form intellectual rather than 
 
BROWNING 691 
 
 emotional, argumentative more than dramatic has had from 
 this time forward a considerable attraction for Mr. Browning, 
 and it is responsible for some of his hardest work, such as 
 ' Fifine at the Fair ' and ' Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau.' 
 This form of monologue appears in Mr. Browning's 
 very earliest poem, and he has developed it more skilfully and 
 employed it more consistently than any other writer. Even in 
 works like ' Sordello ' and ' The Red Cotton Night-Cap Coun- 
 try,' which are thrown into the narrative form, the finest and 
 most characteristic parts are in monologue ; and ' The Inn 
 Album ' is a series of slightly linked dialogues which are only 
 monologues in disguise. Nearly all the lyrics, romances, 
 idyls; nearly all the miscellaneous poems, long and short, are 
 monologues. And even in the dramas . . . there is 
 visibly a growing tendency toward the monologue, with its 
 mental and individual, in place of the dialogue with its active 
 and various, interests." -John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " Browning is a dramatic thinker, generally thinking 
 within the imaginative fetters of monologue, even when not 
 throwing his thoughts into that external form. . . . He 
 is a great imaginative apologist rather than either a lyric or 
 dramatic poet. . . . The consequence is that he is con- 
 stantly tempted to throw his dramatic conceptions into a form 
 which rids him altogether of the necessity for a plot. . 
 They are generally apologetic monologues addressed to a vis- 
 ionary but half- indicated auditor. . . . Wherever we 
 have a peculiarly jarring metre and jingling rhymes, there Mr. 
 Browning is attempting to disguise ... a speech in a 
 song, to hide the tight garment of apologetic monologue by 
 throwing over it the easy undress of spontaneous feeling."- 
 J?. H, Hutton. 
 
 " Even in the most conventional, this poet cannot refrain 
 from the long monologues, stilted action, and metaphysical 
 discussion which mark the closet-drama and unfit a composi- 
 tion for the stage." . C. Stedman. 
 
692 BROWNING 
 
 " As part of his method, it should be noted that his real 
 trust is upon the monologue rather than upon the dialogue. 
 In much the larger number of Browning's poems 
 there is but one speaker, so that his method may be properly 
 called the monodramatic. The time, the country, the social 
 and the moral environment, the situation and character of the 
 speaker, are all developed through his words, no clew being 
 given to them except in the title of the poem." G. W. 
 Cooke. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " And she, she lies in my hand as tame 
 
 As a pear late basking over a wall ; 
 Just a touch to try, and off it came ; 
 'T is mine can I let it fall ? 
 
 " With no mind to eat it, that's the worst ! 
 
 Were it thrown in the road, would the case assist ? 
 'Twas quenching a dozen blue-flies' thirst 
 When I gave its stalk a twist. 
 
 " And I, what I seem to my friend, you see ; 
 
 What I soon shall seem to his love, you guess : 
 What I seem to myself, do you ask of me ? 
 No hero, I confess. 
 
 " 'T is an awkward thing to play with souls, 
 And matter enough to save one's own : 
 Yet think of my friend, and the burning coals 
 We played with for bits of stone ! " 
 
 A Light Woman. 
 
 11 You're my friend 
 
 What a thing friendship is, world without end ! 
 How it gives the heart and soul a stir-up 
 As if somebody broached you a glorious runlet, 
 And poured out, all lovelily, sparklingly sunlit, 
 Our green Moldavia, the streaky syrup, 
 
BROWNING 693 
 
 Cotnar as old as the time of the Druids 
 
 Friendship may match with that monarch of fluids ; 
 
 Each supplies a dry brain, fills you its ins-and-outs, 
 
 Gives your life's hour-glass a shake when the thin sand doubts 
 
 Whether to run on or stop short, and guarantees 
 
 Age is not all made of stark sloth and arrant ease." 
 
 The Flight of the Duchess. 
 
 11 I am poor brother Lippo, by your leave ; 
 You need not clap your torches to my face. 
 Zooks, what's to blame ? you think you see a monk ! 
 What, 'tis past midnight, and you go the rounds, 
 And here you catch me at an alley's end 
 Where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar ? 
 The Carmine's my cloister : hunt it up, 
 Do harry out, if you must show your zeal, 
 Whatever rat, there, haps on his wrong hole, 
 And nip each softling of a wee white mouse, 
 Weke, weke, that's crept to keep him company." 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 5. Optimism Robust Fortitude. In this day of 
 languid pessimism, when the columns of our daily press teem 
 with records of morbidness, despair, and suicide, to read one 
 of Browning's robust lyrics is like drinking in a draught of 
 mountain air, uncontaminated by the smoke and dust of civ- 
 ilization. No poet better illustrates Lowell's phrase about 
 " bracing the moral fibre." 
 
 " Browning is one of the healthiest of modern English poets; 
 there is nothing morbid in his writing ; he takes an intensely 
 earnest view of life and its duties. Taking the completed 
 round of his work, from ' Paracelsus ' to ' Asolando,' the 
 reader will find that Browning is essentially optimistic. To 
 him life is a glad, sweet thing; so he will rejoice therein and 
 be glad. Life is a serious and earnest piece of business yet 
 it is also a beautiful and joyous thing withal, and to be en- 
 joyed as the Giver meant it to be." Augustine Birrell. 
 
694 BROWNING 
 
 " The key note of his philosophy is : 
 
 * God's in his heaven, 
 All's right with the world ! ' 
 
 He has such a hopefulness of belief in human nature that he 
 shrunk from no man, however clothed and cloaked in evil, 
 however miry with stumblings and fallings. . . . But 
 the test of optimism is its sight of evil. Mr. Browning has 
 fathomed it and he can still hope, for he sees the reflection of 
 the sun in the depths of every dull pool and puddle. 
 The teaching in ' A Bean-Stripe ' is the same that Mr. Brown- 
 ing has given us all through his career : the utterance of a 
 sturdy but by no means facile optimism, not untried, indeed, 
 but unconquerable." John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " Browning had contempt for hopelessness, hatred for de- 
 spair, joy for eager hope, faith in perfection, pity for all effort 
 which only claimed this world, for all love which was content 
 to begin and end on earth, reproof for all goodness and beauty 
 which was content to die forever." Stopf or d Brooke. 
 
 " There is none of the feeble optimism of his age in Brown- 
 ing. He is no poet who exults in the enormous preponder- 
 ance of good over evil in human life. . . . On the other 
 hand, no one has taught more positively than Browning that 
 life, if confined to this earth and without any infinite love in 
 it, is not the life which has filled the noblest minds with ex- 
 ultation, nor, indeed, any shadow of it." ^?. H. Hutton. 
 
 11 Mr. Browning is an optimist ; but the idea of a progress 
 of mankind enters into his poems in a comparatively slight 
 degree. Mr. Browning makes that progress dependent on the 
 productions of higher passions and aspirations, hopes and 
 joys and sorrow." Edward Dowden. 
 
 "The continuity of civilization and of the life of the hu- 
 man spirit, widening by an inevitable arid healthful process of 
 growth and expansion, evidently enters into all his thought, 
 and gives it a certain repose even in the intensity of passion- 
 
BROWNING 695 
 
 ate utterance. Whatever decay of former ideals and tradi- 
 tions his contemporaries may discover and lament, Browning 
 holds to the general soundness and wholesomeness of progress, 
 and finds each successive stage of growth not antagonistic but 
 supplementary to those which have preceded it. ... 
 Though all the world turn pessimist, this singer will still drink 
 of the fountains of joy and trace the courses of the streams that 
 flow from it by green masses of foliage and the golden glory 
 of fruit. . . . Instead of being overwhelmed by the vast- 
 ness of modern life, he rejoices in it as the swimmer rejoices 
 when he feels the fathomless sea buoyant to his stroke, and 
 floats secure, the abysses beneath and the infinity of space over- 
 head." Zf. W. Mabie. 
 
 " His optimism ... is a conviction which has sus- 
 tained the shocks of criticism and the test of facts. Outer 
 law and inner motive are, for the poet, manifestations of the 
 same beneficent purpose ; and instead of duty in the sense of 
 an autocratic, imperative, or beneficent tyranny, he finds deep 
 beneath man's foolishness and sin a constant tendency toward 
 the good which is bound up with the very nature of man's 
 reason and will. . . . Carlyle's cry of despair is turned 
 by Browning into a song of victory. While the former re- 
 gards the struggle between good and evil as a fixed battle, in 
 which the forces are immovably interlocked, the latter has 
 the consciousness of battling against a retreating foe ; and the 
 conviction of coming triumph gives joyous vigor to every 
 stroke. . . . He strives hard to come into the misery of 
 man in all its sadness ; and, after doing so, he claims, not as 
 a matter of poetic sentiment but as a matter of strict truth, 
 that good is the heart and reality of it all. It is true that he 
 cannot demonstrate the truth of his principle by reference to 
 all the facts any more than the scientific man can justify his 
 hypothesis in every detail ; but he holds it as a faith which 
 reason can justify and experience establish, although not in 
 every isolated phenomenon." Henry James. 
 
696 BROWNING 
 
 " One glorious characteristic of his many-sided poetry 
 . . . is Mr. Browning's magnificent optimism. . . . 
 It is large-sighted and nobly masculine. . . . It is an 
 optimism which had been nobly fought for through years of 
 neglect, disappointment, poverty, and trial, till it had become 
 the supreme conviction of his reason." P. W. Farrar. 
 
 " For him there can be no eventual failure; there may be 
 often an apparent failure the soul may be unmade by folly, 
 unmanned by evil but the nobler part of man's nature must 
 finally triumph; and the soul will be remade ' in those other 
 heights in other lives ' which shall yet be a reality to every 
 son of Adam. If a man does fail in his pursuit after Truth or 
 Goodness or Beauty, he is not finally overcome ; he has gained 
 somewhat he has endeavored ; for had he not attempted he 
 could not have failed : consequently, failure but implies ulti- 
 mate success." William G. Kings land. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Then welcome each rebuff 
 
 That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
 Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go ! 
 
 Be our joys three parts pain ! 
 
 Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
 Learn, nor account the pang ; dare, never grudge the throe ! 
 
 " Let us not always say, 
 
 1 Spite of this flesh to-day 
 
 I strove, made head, gained ground upon the whole !' 
 As the bird wings and sings, 
 Let us cry, ' All good things 
 
 Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now than flesh helps soul ! ' ' 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 " It's wiser being good than bad ; 
 
 It's safer being meek than fierce ; 
 It's fitter being sane than mad. 
 My own hope is, a sun will pierce 
 
BROWNING 697 
 
 The thickest cloud earth ever stretched ; 
 That, after Last returns the First, 
 
 Though a wide compass 'round be fetched ; 
 That what began best can't end worst, 
 Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst." 
 
 Apparent Failure. 
 
 " God uses us to help each other so, 
 
 Lending our minds out. Have you noticed, now, 
 
 Your cullion's hanging face ? A bit of chalk, 
 
 And trust me but you should, though ! How much more 
 
 If I drew higher things with the same truth ! 
 
 That were to take the Prior's pulpit-place, 
 
 Interpret God to all of you ! Oh ! oh ! 
 
 It makes me mad to see what men shall do 
 
 And we in our graves ! This world's no blot for us 
 
 Nor blank ; it means intensely, and means good : 
 
 To find its meaning is my meat and drink." 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 6. Strong, Undaunted Religious Faith. Much has 
 been written concerning Browning's religious creed, but there 
 seems to be no general agreement in defining it. Certainly 
 he was not " orthodox," in the ordinary acceptation of that 
 term ; yet it is doubtful if any of the " orthodox " poets, or 
 all of them put together, have done so much to lead and lift 
 men up to a higher life and to nobler aspirations. A Deist 
 Browning certainly is, if not much more. 
 
 " This vivid hope and trust in man is bound up with a 
 strong and strenuous faith in God. Mr. Browning's Christi- 
 anity is wider than our creeds, and is all the more vitally 
 Christian in that it never sinks into pietism. He is never di- 
 dactic ; but his faith is the root of his art, and transforms and 
 transfigures it." -John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " Browning never faltered in his claim of the spiritual as 
 the first, as the master in human nature ; nor in his faith of 
 God with us, making, guiding, loving us, and crowning us at 
 last with righteousness and love. . . . No poets have 
 
698 BROWNING 
 
 ever been more theological, not even Byron and Shelley. 
 [Speaking of Browning and Tennyson.] What original sin 
 means and what position man holds on account of it, lies at 
 the root of half of Browning's poetry ; and the greater part 
 of his very simple metaphysics belongs to the solution of this 
 question of the defect in man." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Browning is the modern interpreter of the divine in 
 nature and life and history." R. H. Home. 
 
 11 Mr. Browning in this volume [" La Saisiaz : The Two 
 Poets of Croisic "] declares that he is ' very sure of God.' It 
 is not that he has remained unmoved during the discussion of 
 the difficult religious problems of the day. He has evidently 
 followed them well, but the circumstances which led to the 
 production of ' La Saisiaz ' demonstrated that he could not 
 hark back from his robust intellectual and spiritual faith into 
 the mists of infidelity. . . . The whole of this poem 
 " Pippa Passes "] is permeated with that large faith in God 
 and in humanity which has always been characteristic of Mr. 
 Browning." G. B. Smith. 
 
 " The difficulties which surround him are not those of a 
 casuist but the stubborn questionings of a spirit whose re- 
 ligious faith is thoroughly earnest and fearless. ... He 
 is clearly one of that class of poets who are also prophets. 
 He was never merely ' the idle singer of an empty day ' 
 but one for whom poetic enthusiasm was intimately bound 
 with religious faith and who spoke ' in numbers.' ' Henry 
 James. 
 
 " Mr. Browning is pre-eminently the religious poet 
 healthy, manly, brave ; with a hope like Jacob's ladder, reach- 
 ing from earth to highest heaven. To him Hope is visible 
 the world around. . . . Browning is one of the health- 
 iest of English poets; there is nothing morbid in his writing 
 as he himself so recently told us ; of necessity, therefore, he 
 takes an intensely earnest view of life and its duties. To him 
 this present life is not the playtime but the apprenticeship of 
 
BROWNING 699 
 
 the soul ; not the place for rest but for good, honest, hearty 
 work." W. G. Kings land. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 "1 believe it ! 'Tis thou, God, that givest, 'tis I who receive : 
 In the first is the last, in thy will is my power to believe. 
 All's one gift : thou canst grant it, moreover, as prompt to my 
 
 prayer, 
 As I breathe out this breath, as I open these arms to the air." 
 
 Saul. 
 " Fool ! All that is at all, 
 
 Lasts ever, past recall ; 
 
 Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand sure : 
 What entered into thee, 
 That was, is, and shall be : 
 Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and clay endure. 
 
 " He fixed thee mid this dance 
 
 Of plastic circumstance, 
 
 This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest : 
 Machinery just meant 
 To give thy soul its bent, 
 Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed." 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 " Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the ineffable Name ? 
 Builder and maker, thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
 What, have fear of change from thee who art ever the same ? 
 Doubt that thy power can fill the heart that thy power ex- 
 pands ? 
 There shall never be one lost good ! What was, shall live as 
 
 before ; 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound ; 
 What was good, shall be good, with, for evil, so much good 
 
 more ; 
 
 On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven, a perfect 
 round." Abt Vogler. 
 
 7. Grotesqueness Incongruity. " Mr. Browning is 
 an artist working by incongruity. Possibly hardly one of his 
 
7OO BROWNING 
 
 most considerable efforts can be found which is not gr-ea-t be- 
 cause of its odd mixture. He puts together things which no 
 one else would have put together. . . . It is very natu- 
 ral that a poet whose wishes incline or whose genius conducts 
 him to a grotesque art should be attracted towards mediaeval 
 subjects. . . . Good elements hidden in horrid accom- 
 paniments are the special theme of grotesque art ; and these 
 mediaeval life and legends afford more copiously than could 
 have been furnished before Christianity gave it new elements 
 of good or since modern civilization has removed some few, at 
 least, of the elements of destruction. . . . Browning has 
 given many excellent specimens of grotesque art within proper 
 boundaries and limits." Walter Bagehot. 
 
 " With the doubtful exception of the ' Heretic's Tragedy,' 
 ' Caliban upon Setebos ' is probably the finest piece of gro- 
 tesque art in the language. . . . The ' Pietro ' of Abano 
 is a fine piece of grotesque art, full of pungent humor, acute- 
 ness, worldly wisdom, and clever phrasing and rhyming. 
 . . . The poem is one of the most characteristic examples 
 of that ' Teutonic grotesque, which lies in the expression of 
 deep ideas through fantastic form ' a grotesque of noble and 
 cultivated art of which Mr. Browning is as great a master in 
 poetry as Carlyle was in prose." -John Addington Symonds. 
 
 " A more valid accusation touches the many verbal per- 
 versities, in which a poet has less right than another to in- 
 dulge. The compound Latin and English of * Don Giacinto,' 
 notwithstanding the fun of the piece, still grows a burden to 
 the flesh. Then there are harsh and formless lines, bursts 
 of metrical chaos, from which a writer's dignity and self- 
 respect ought surely to be enough to preserve him. Again, 
 there are passages marked by a coarse violence of expression 
 that is nothing short of barbarous. ... It may well be, 
 therefore, that the grotesque caprices which Mr. Browning 
 unfortunately permits to himself may find misguided admirers, 
 or, what is worse, even imitators. . . . The countrymen 
 
BROWNING 701 
 
 of Shakespeare have had to learn to forgive terrible uncouth- 
 nesses, blunt outrages to form and beauty, to fine creative 
 genius." -John Morley. 
 
 "He loves what is odd, grotesque, morbid, quaint. Brown- 
 ing's poetry is often harsh in manner, wanting in melody, 
 and rough in rhyme and metre. He introduces uncouth and 
 distracting rhymes." G. W. Cooke. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Will sprawl, now that the heat of day is past, 
 Flat on his belly in the pit's much mire, 
 With elbows wide, fists clenched to prop his chin ; 
 And while he kicks both feet in the cool slush, 
 And feels about his spine small eft things course, 
 Run in and out each arm, and make him laugh 
 
 Thinketh he dwelleth i' the cold o' the moon ; 
 Thinketh he made it, with the sun to match. 
 But not the stars the stars came otherwise : 
 Only made clouds, winds, meteors, such as that." 
 
 Caliban upon Setebos. 
 
 " That's if ye carve my epitaph aright, 
 
 Choice Latin, picked phrase, Tully's every word, 
 No gaudy ware like Gandolf s second line 
 Tully, my masters ? Ulpian serves his need ! 
 And then how I shall lie through centuries, 
 And hear the blessed mutter of the mass, 
 And see God made and eaten all day long, 
 And feel the steady candle-flame, and taste 
 Good strong, thick, stupefying incense-smoke ! 
 For as I lie here, hours of the dead night, 
 Dying in state and by such slow degrees, 
 I fold my arms as if they clasped a crook, 
 And stretch my feet forth straight as stone can point, 
 And let the bedclothes for a mortcloth drop 
 Into great laps and folds of sculptor's work." 
 The Bishop Orders His Tomb at Saint Praxetfs Church. 
 
702 BROWNING 
 
 " A viscid choler is observable 
 
 In tertians, I was nearly bold to say ; 
 
 And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 
 
 Than our school wots of : there's a spider here 
 
 Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of tombs, 
 
 Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; 
 
 Take five and drop them . . . but who knows his mind, 
 
 The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? 
 
 His service payeth me a sublimate 
 
 Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 
 
 Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn." An Epistle. 
 
 8. Earnestness Soberness. With Browning, life is 
 a serious matter. There is little of the sportive element in his 
 verse, little of the lighter forms of humor. 
 
 " Most of Browning's poems might be described precisely 
 as proposing for their immediate object truth, not pleasure ; 
 though, when clearly apprehended, they seldom fail to give 
 that higher kind of imaginative satisfaction which is one of 
 the most enviable intellectual states, they give a very moder- 
 ate amount of immediate sensitive pleasure." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " ' A Blot on the 'Scutcheon ' [on the stage] failed. This, 
 of course, for there is little in it to relieve the human spirit 
 which cannot bear too much of earnestness and woe added to 
 the mystery and wonder of our daily lives." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 11 His voice sounds loudest and also clearest for the things 
 which, as a race, we like best the fascination of faith, the ac- 
 ceptance of life, the respect for its mysteries, the endurance 
 of its changes, the vitality of the will, the validity of charac- 
 ter, the beauty of action, the seriousness, above all, of the 
 great human passion." Henry James. 
 
 " The lines [George Meredith's " Modern Love "] convey 
 poetic sentiment rather than reasoned truth ; while Mr. Brown- 
 ing's close [to " The Ring and the Book "] would be no unfit 
 epilogue to a scientific essay on history or a treatise on the 
 errors of the human understanding and the inaccuracy of 
 human opinions and judgment. This is the common note 
 
BROWNING 703 
 
 of his highest work ; hard thought and reason illustrating 
 themselves in dramatic circumstances, and the thought and 
 reason are not wholly fused, they exist apart and irradiate 
 with far-shooting beams the moral confusion of the tragedy." 
 -John Morley. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " We that had loved him so, followed him, honored him, 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
 Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us, 
 Burns, Shelley, were with us, they watch from their graves ! 
 He alone breaks from the van and the freemen, 
 He alone sinks to the rear and the slaves." 
 
 The Lost Leader. 
 " Poor vaunt of life, indeed, 
 
 Were man but formed to feed 
 On joy, to solely seek and find and feast : 
 Such feasting ended, then 
 As sure an end to men ; 
 
 Irks care the crop-full bird ? Frets doubt the maw-crammed 
 beast ? 
 
 " For thence, a paradox 
 
 Which comforts while it mocks, 
 Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
 What I aspired to be, 
 And was not, comforts me : 
 A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale." 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra. 
 
 " Oh, we're sunk enough here, God knows i 
 But not quite so sunk that moments, 
 Sure though seldom, are denied us, 
 When the spirit's true endowments 
 Stand out plainly from its false ones, 
 And apprise it if pursuing 
 Or the right way or the wrong way, 
 To its triumph or undoing. 
 
704 BROWNING 
 
 " There are flashes struck from midnights, 
 There are fire-flames noondays kindle, 
 Whereby piled-up honours perish, 
 Whereby swollen ambitions dwindle, 
 While just this or that poor impulse, 
 Which for once had play unstifled, 
 Seems the sole work of a lifetime 
 That away the rest have trifled." Cristina. 
 
 I/ 9. Cool, Grim Satire, Often Humorous. As might 
 be expected in a man of Browning's robust temperament, he 
 deals but little in the milder forms of satire. There is little 
 of the good-humored banter of Lamb, little of the sly thrust 
 of Addison. Like Johnson, Burke, and Macaulay, Browning 
 prefers a bludgeon to a stiletto, and strikes his victim square- 
 ly in front or pierces him with arrows that leave a stinging 
 wound. 
 
 "This power [satire] is a favorite with Browning, who 
 certainly possesses it abundant in measure and trenchant in 
 quality. He has employed it with singular success ; but then 
 to its employment he has not unfrequently sacrificed poetry. 
 . . . Each [monologue] is a legitimate, because a poetic, 
 exercise of the tremendous power of satire possessed by its 
 writer. And each gives proof of how disinterested he is in 
 its employment ; since he forbears all appeal to the ill-nature 
 of his readers by directing its lightnings against evil-doers 
 remote from them, instead (like the older satirists) of aiming 
 them at the sinners at their doors. . . . Nor should 
 we omit to notice the deep-rooted convictions, alike moral 
 and religious, from which Browning's severer satire springs ; 
 or fail to acknowledge that if he sometimes disallows the 
 claims of the beautiful, he is never unmindful of those of 
 the truth." Stopf or d Brooke. 
 
 "As a humorist in poetry, Mr. Browning takes rank with 
 our greatest. His humor, like most of his qualities, is pecul- 
 iar to himself; though no doubt Carlyle had something of it. 
 
BROWNING 7O5 
 
 It is of remarkably wide capacity, and ranges from the effer- 
 vescence of pure fun and freak to that salt and briny laughter 
 whose taste is bitterer than tears." John Addington Symonds. 
 "His humor is as genuine as that of Carlyle, and if his 
 laugh have not the earthquake character with which Emerson 
 has so happily labelled the shaggy merriment of that Jean 
 Paul, Burns, yet it is always sincere and hearty, and there is a 
 tone of meaning in it which always sets us to thinking." 
 Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 " Was it ' grammar ' wherein you would coach me 
 
 Was it ' clearness of words which convey thought' ? 
 
 Ay, if words ever needed enswathe naught 
 
 But ignorance, impudence, envy 
 
 And malice what word-swathe would then vie 
 
 With yours for a clearness crystalline ? 
 
 But had you to put in one small line 
 
 Some thought big and bouncing as noddle 
 
 Of goose, born to cackle and waddle, 
 
 You'd know, as you hissed, spat, and sputtered, 
 Clear ' quack-quack ' is easily uttered." Pacchiarotto. 
 
 " See, as the prettiest graves will do in time, 
 Our poet's wants the freshness of its prime ; 
 Spite of the sexton's browsing horse, the sods 
 Have struggled through its binding osier rods ; 
 Headstone and half-sunk footstone lean awry, 
 Wanting the brick-work promised by-and-by ; 
 How the minute gray lichens, plate o'er plate, 
 Have softened down the crisp-cut name and date ! " 
 
 Earth's Immortalities 
 
 " And this why, he was red in vain, 
 
 Or black poor fellow that is blue ! 
 What fancy was it, turned your brain ? 
 
 Oh, women were the prize for you ! 
 45 
 
706 BROWNING 
 
 Money gets women, cards and dice 
 Get money, and ill-luck gets just 
 
 The copper couch and one clear, nice, 
 Cool squirt of water o'er your bust 
 The right thing to extinguish lust ! " 
 
 Apparent Failure. 
 
 10. Fondness for Argumentation. " One may find 
 such a point in that [" Balaustion "] which critics know as 
 the Euripidean sophistry, . . . and which means the 
 tendency of his characters to argue for argument's sake, to 
 conduct the pleadings of passion like pleadings at the bar, to 
 say everything which can be said." Sidney Colvin. 
 
 " Generally speaking, where Lord Tennyson is meditative, 
 Browning is argumentative, showing us his thought in process 
 as it moves from point to point." Mary Wilson. 
 
 " Mr. Browning's argumentative verse divides itself into 
 two classes ; those in which the speaker is defending a pre- 
 conceived judgment, and an antagonist is implied, and those 
 in which he is trying to form a judgment or accept one ; and 
 the supposed listener, if there be such, is only a confidant. 
 The first kind of argument or discussion is carried on 
 apparently as much for victory as for truth ; and employs 
 the weapons of satire or the tactics of special-pleading, as 
 the case demands. The second is an often pathetic and 
 always single-minded endeavor to get at the truth. " Mrs. 
 Sutherland Orr. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Your business is not to catch men with show, 
 With homage to the perishable clay, 
 But lift them over it, ignore it all, 
 Make them forget there's such a thing as flesh. 
 Your business is to paint the souls of men 
 Man's soul, and it's a fire, smoke ... no, it's not . . . 
 It's vapor done up like a new-born babe 
 (In that shape when you die it leaves your mouth) 
 
BROWNING 
 
 It's . . . well, what matters talking, it's the soul ! 
 Give us no more of body than shows soul ! 
 Here's Giotto, with his Saint a-praising God, 
 That sets us praising, why not stop with him ? 
 Why put all thoughts of praise out of our head 
 With wonder at lines, colors, and what-not ? 
 Paint the soul, never mind the legs and arms ! " 
 
 Fra Lippo Lippi. 
 
 " As it was better, youth 
 Should strive, through acts uncouth, 
 
 Toward making than repose on aught found made : 
 So, better, age, exempt 
 From strife, should know than tempt 
 
 Further. Thou waitedst age : wait death nor be afraid ! 
 
 " Enough now, if the Right 
 
 And Good and Infinite 
 
 Be named here, as thou callest thy hand thine own, 
 With knowledge absolute, 
 Subject to no dispute 
 
 From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee feel alone." 
 
 Rabbi Ben Ezra . 
 
 " What of a villa ? Though winter be over in March by rights, 
 'Tis May perhaps ere the snow shall have withered well off the 
 
 heights: 
 You've the brown ploughed land before, where the oxen steam 
 
 and wheeze, 
 And the hills over-smoked behind by the faint gray olive-trees. 
 
 All the year long at the villa, nothing to see though you linger, 
 Except yon cypress that points like death's lean lifted forefinger. 
 Some think fireflies pretty, when they mix i' the corn and mingle, 
 Or thrid the stinking hemp till the stalks of it seem a-tingle. 
 Late August or early September the stunning cicala is shrill, 
 And the bees keep their tiresome whine round the resinous firs 
 
 on the hill. 
 Enough of the seasons, I spare you the months of the fever 
 
 and chill." Up at a Villa Down in the City. 
 
7O8 BROWNING 
 
 II. Dramatic Power. "Browning, when in a poem 
 or drama he puts forth his peculiar power, when he writes 
 with that motive which gives his work its singular value, 
 is always dramatic. Whether he is so of purpose I shall 
 not venture to say ; but the seeming of his poetry is that 
 it takes shape from a necessity of his moral nature, not 
 from a deliberate intellectual preference." Richard Grant 
 White. 
 
 "It is customary to call Browning a dramatist, and with- 
 out doubt he represents the dramatic element, such as it is, of 
 the recent English school. He counts among his admirers 
 many intellectual persons, some of whom pronounce him the 
 greatest dramatic poet since Shakespeare, and one has said 
 that ' it is to him that we must pay homage for whatever is 
 good and great and profound in the second period of the 
 poetic drama of England.' . . . Something of a dramatic 
 character pertains to nearly all of Browning's lyrics. Like 
 his wife, he has preferred to study human hearts rather than 
 the forms of nature." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "It is sometimes also suggested that there are dramatic 
 poets and dramatic poets ; that, though Browning does not 
 follow the modes of Shakespeare, he is in a certain sense, and 
 in a very true sense, dramatic in spirit if not in form. But I 
 do not think we see sufficient recognition of the fact that 
 Browning works with quite a different intention to, and in 
 quite a different manner from, Shakespeare; and must be 
 judged by other standards, that is, by his own. . . . We 
 see in Browning a drama of the interior, a tragedy or comedy 
 of the soul. . . . The dramatic principles of Browning 
 are not those of Shakespeare. Shakespeare makes his charac- 
 ters live ; Browning makes his characters think." -John Ad- 
 dington Symonds. 
 
 " To us he appears to have a wider range and greater free- 
 dom of movement than any other of the younger English poets. 
 In his dramas we find always a leading design and a conscious 
 
BROWNING 709 
 
 subordination of all the parts to it. In each one of them, also, 
 below the more apparent and exterior sources of interest we 
 find an illustration of some general idea which bears only a 
 philosophical relation to the particular characters, thoughts, 
 and incidents, and without which the drama is still complete 
 in itself, but which yet binds together and sustains the whole 
 and conduces to that unity for which we esteem these works 
 so highly. In another respect, Mr. Browning's dramatic 
 power is rare. The characters of his women are finely dis- 
 criminated. No two are alike, and yet the characteristic feat- 
 ures of each are touched with the most delicate precision. By 
 far the greater number of authors who have attempted female 
 characters have given us mere automata. They think it enough 
 if they make them subordinate to a generalized idea of human 
 nature. Mr. Browning never forgets that women are women 
 and not simply human beings; for there they occupy common 
 ground with men. Many English dramas have been written 
 within a few years, the authors of which have established their 
 claim to the title of poet. We cannot but allow that we find 
 in them fine thoughts finely expressed, passages of dignified 
 and sustained eloquence, and as adequate a conception of char- 
 acter as the reading of history and the study of models will 
 furnish. But it is only in Browning that we find enough of 
 freshness, vigor, grasp, and of that clear insight and concep- 
 tion which enable the artist to construct characters from 
 within and so to make them real things and not images, 
 to warrant our granting the honor due to this dramatist." 
 Lowell. 
 
 "The dramatic element in Browning's poetry renders it 
 difficult to construct his character from his works ; . . . 
 though a true dramatist, he is not like Shakespeare and Scott, 
 whose characters seem never to have had an author." Henry 
 James. 
 
 11 One critic calls him a dramatist, and so he is ; for with 
 the exception of Sir Henry Taylor's ' Philip Van Artevelde ' 
 
7IO BROWNING 
 
 and Mr. Swinburne's 'Both well,' he has written the only 
 works within this generation worthy of being called dramas." 
 G. B. Smith. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 1 Now, don't, sir ! Don't expose me ! Just this once ! 
 This was the first and only time, I'll swear, 
 Look at me, see, I kneel, yes, by the soul 
 Of her who hears (your sainted mother, sir !) 
 All, except this last accident, was truth 
 This little kind of slip ! and even this, 
 It was your own wine, sir, the good champagne 
 (I took it for Catawba, you're so kind), 
 Which put the folly in my head ! 
 
 " ' Get up ? ' 
 
 You still inflict on me that terrible face ? 
 You show no mercy ? Not for her dear sake, 
 The sainted spirit's, whose soft breath even now 
 Blows on my cheek (don't you feel something, sir ?) 
 You'll tell ? 
 
 Go tell, then ! Who the Devil cares 
 What such a rowdy chooses to ... 
 
 Aie aie aie ! 
 
 Please, sir ! your thumbs are through my windpipe, sir ! 
 Ch-ch ! 
 
 " Well, sir, I hope you've done it now ! 
 O Lord ! I little thought, sir, yesterday, 
 When your departed mother spoke those words 
 Of peace through me, and moved you, sir, so much, 
 You gave me (very kind it was of you) 
 These shirt-studs (better take them back again, 
 Please, sir) yes, little did I think so soon 
 A trifle of trick, all through a glass too much 
 Of his own champagne, would change my best of friends 
 Into an angry gentleman ! " Mr. Sludge, The Medium. 
 
BROWNING 
 
 711 
 
 Guendolen. " She's dead 
 
 Let me unlock her arms ! " 
 
 Tresham. " She threw them thus 
 
 About my neck and blessed me, and then died. 
 You'll let them stay now, Guendolen ! " 
 
 Austin. " Leave her 
 
 And look to him ! What ails you, Thorold ? " 
 
 Guendolen. " White 
 
 As she and whiter ! Austin quick this side ! " 
 
 Austin. " A froth is oozing thro' his clenched teeth 
 Both lips, where they're not bitten thro', are black ! 
 Speak, dearest Thorold ! " 
 
 Tresham. " Something does weigh down 
 
 My neck besides her weight ; thanks ; I should fall 
 But for you, Austin, I believe ! there, there 
 'Twill pass away soon ! Ah I had forgotten 
 I am dying." 
 
 Guendolen. " Thorold Thorold why was this ? " 
 
 Tresham. " I said, just as I drank the poison off, 
 The earth would be no longer earth to me, 
 The life out of all life was gone from me ! 
 There are blind ways provided, the foredone, 
 Heart-weary player in this pageant world 
 Drops out by letting the main masque defile 
 By the conspicuous portal : I am through 
 Just through ! " A Blot on the 'Scutcheon. 
 
 " You, now, so kind here, all you Florentines, 
 
 What is it in your eyes . . . those lips, those brows . . 
 
 Nobody spoke it ... yet I know it well ! 
 
 Come now this battle saves you, all's at end, 
 
 Your use of me is o'er, for good, for evil 
 
 Come now, what's done against me, while I speak, 
 
 In Florence ? l Come ! I feel it in my blood, 
 
 My eyes, my hair, a voice is in my ear 
 
 That spite of all this smiling and kind speech 
 
 You are betraying me ! What is it you do ? 
 
 Have it your way, and think my use is over ; 
 
 That you are saved and may throw off the mask 
 
 Have it my way, and think more work remains 
 
712 BROWNING 
 
 Which I could do so show you fear me not, 
 
 Or prudent be, or generous, as you choose, 
 
 But tell me tell me what I refused to know 
 
 At noon, lest heart should fail me ! Well ? That letter ? 
 
 My fate is known at Florence ! What is it ? " Luria. 
 
 12. Mastery of Rhyme. " There is no such extrava- 
 gant and out-of-the-way word in the language that Browning 
 will not find you a rhyme for, if not in one word, then in 
 two, three, or four ; and if not in one language then in 
 another. ' ' Roden Noel. 
 
 " In one very important matter, that of rhyme, he is per- 
 haps the greatest master of our language ; in single and double, 
 in simple and grotesque alike, he succeeds in fitting rhyme to 
 rhyme with a perfection which I have never found in any other 
 poet of any age." John Addington Symonds. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " But I think I gave you as good ! 
 
 ' That foreign fellow, who can know 
 How she pays, in a tuneful mood, 
 For his tuning her that piano ? ' 
 
 " Could you say so, and never say 
 
 ( Suppose we join hands and fortunes, 
 And I fetch her from over the way, 
 
 Her, piano, and long tunes and short tunes ? ' 
 
 " But you meet the Prince at the Board, 
 
 I'm queen myself at bals-pare, 
 I've married a rich old lord, 
 And you're dubbed knight and an R.A." 
 
 Youth and Art. 
 
 " But where I begin my own narration 
 Is a little after I took my station 
 To breathe the fresh air from the balcony, 
 And, having in those days a falcon eye, 
 
BROWNING 713 
 
 To follow the hunt thro* the open country, 
 
 From where the bushes thinlier crested 
 
 The hillocks, to a plain where's not one tree : 
 
 When, in a moment, my ear was arrested 
 
 By was it singing, or was it saying, 
 
 Or a strange musical instrument playing 
 
 In the chamber ? and to be certain 
 
 I pushed the lattice, pulled the curtain." 
 
 The Flight of the Duchess. 
 
 11 But the most turned in yet more abruptly 
 From a certain squalid knot of alleys, 
 Where the town's bad blood once slept corruptly, 
 Which now the little chapel rallies 
 And leads into day again its priestliness 
 Lending itself to hide their beastliness 
 So cleverly (thanks in part to the mason), 
 And putting so cheery a whitewashed face on 
 Those neophytes too much in lack of it, 
 That, where you cross the common as I did, 
 And meet the party thus presided, 
 ' Mount Zion ' with Love-lane at the back of it, 
 They front you as little disconcerted 
 As, bound for the hills, her fate averted, 
 And her wicked people made to mind him, 
 Lot might have marched with Gomorrah behind him." 
 Christmas -Eve and Easter- Day. 
 
WHITTIER, 1807-1892 
 
 Biographical Outline. John Greenleaf Whittier, born 
 December 17, 1807, in the East Parish of Haverhill, Mass.; 
 both parents strict Quakers ; father a farmer of supposed Hu- 
 guenot descent, living far from any neighbor and far from any 
 school ; Whittier works as a boy on his father's farm, where, 
 through insufficient clothing and other unwise methods of 
 " toughening" then in vogue among New England farmers, 
 he sows the seeds of lifelong ill health ; until his nineteenth 
 year his only education is obtained at a district school, which 
 is open but a small part of each year ; his first literary inspi- 
 ration comes from Burns, through the medium of a travelling 
 Scotch pedler, and from Scott ; as a school-boy he used to 
 cover his slate with original rhymes instead of sums ; during 
 his early youth he writes much verse, but his father discour- 
 ages the son's " foolish waste of time over his day-dreams ; " 
 his first published poem, "The Exile's Departure," was con- 
 tributed anonymously, in 1826, to the Free Press, then re- 
 cently established in Newburyport by William Lloyd Garri- 
 son ; the merit of the poem is recognized by Garrison, who 
 discovers its authorship, and, without invitation, visits Whittier 
 on his father's farm ; he finds the young poet hoeing corn and 
 clad so poorly and meagrely that he at first declines to be pre- 
 sented to the young city editor, but afterward yields to the 
 importunities of his sister Elizabeth ; Garrison declares that 
 Whittier " bids fair to become another Bernard Barton," and 
 urges him to obtain a better education ; Whittier's father is not 
 pleased with the idea, as he is unable to aid his son, but the 
 young poet learns from one of his father's farm -laborers the art 
 of making ladies' slippers, and thus soon earns money enough to 
 
WHITTIER 715 
 
 pay for his board and tuition for six months at the then newly 
 established academy at Haverhill ; in May, 1827, soon after 
 entering this school, he writes, by invitation, an ode to be 
 sung at the dedication of the new academy building ; from 
 1826 to 1830 he contributes to the Essex Gazette several 
 poems, some of which are promptly plagiarized by city jour- 
 nals ; two terms of six months each at the Haverhill Academy 
 constitute Whittier's " higher education ; " in the winter of 
 1827-28 he has his first and only experience as a teacher, 
 taking charge of a district school in West Amesbury, near 
 Merrimac. 
 
 Late in 1828 Whittier is offered, through Garrison, the 
 editorship of the Philanthropist, a Boston journal the first 
 temperance paper ever published and he begins his editorial 
 work there January i, 1829 ; after nine months in the Boston 
 printing-office he is recalled to the home-farm by his father's 
 illness, and he remains there till his father's death in January, 
 1830, meantime contributing much prose and verse to various 
 periodicals ; in 1832, on the nomination of Geo. D. Prentice, 
 Whittier is made editor of the New England Review, pub- 
 lished at Hartford ; he accepts the position, but ill health 
 soon compels him to resign it and to return to the farm-home; 
 between 1829 and 1832 he writes over one hundred poems ; 
 in the spring of 1833, while still carrying on the farm, he 
 writes and publishes at his own expense his great prose pam- 
 phlet " Justice and Expediency " a step that marks specifi- 
 cally Whittier's adoption of Abolition tenets; this pamphlet 
 was reprinted and scattered broadcast by other Abolitionists, 
 and became decidedly the most influential paper of that decade 
 for the advancement of the anti-slavery cause ; most of the 
 poems now published in Whittier's complete works under the 
 title " Voices of Freedom " were written between 1833 and 
 1847, and were contributed to various journals ; he is a dele- 
 gate to the first national anti-slavery convention, in Decem- 
 ber, 1833, a member of the Massachusetts Legislature in 
 
WHITTIER 
 
 1834-35, and refuses a re-election for 1835-36 ; late in 1835 
 he narrowly escapes being mobbed for his anti-slavery views 
 at Concord, N. H. 
 
 In the spring of 1836 the Haverhill farm is sold, and the 
 poet buys a cottage at Amesbury, Mass., which remains his 
 home during the rest of his life; in 1840, and for several 
 years at that period, Whittier was practically the political 
 leader of his congressional district, and was able to dictate to 
 Caleb Gushing the conditions (relating to Cushing's attitude 
 toward slavery) on which he might be re-elected to Congress ; 
 in 1836 he publishes " Mogg Megone " in pamphlet form at 
 Boston a poem that he afterward endeavored vainly to sup- 
 press ; in 1837 he is in New York City, acting as one of the 
 secretaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society ; in March, 
 1838, he becomes the responsible editor of the Pennsylvania 
 Freeman, before edited by Benjamin Lundy under the name 
 of the National Enquirer, and he holds this relation till 1840, 
 though he is frequently compelled by ill health to return to 
 Amesbury, sending thence by mail his contributions to the 
 Freeman ; when, in 1841, the pro-slavery mob burned Penn- 
 sylvania Hall, the famous building in which was the office of 
 the Freeman, he saved his private papers at great personal 
 risk, and the next day calmly issued the Freeman from another 
 office ; during an absence of Whittier at Amesbury in Novem- 
 ber, 1838, the agent of the Anti-Slavery Society of Pennsyl- 
 vania issued a volume of his poems amounting to one hundred 
 and fifty pages ; of the fifty poems in this collection, none were 
 published in the " Legends of New England," and only eleven 
 of them are to be found in the complete edition of Whittier's 
 works published fifty years afterward ; the title-page of this 
 first authorized collection of Whittier's poems, which he had 
 collected during the summer of 1838, bears the text from 
 Ecclesiastes iv. i : "So I returned and considered all the 
 oppressions that are done under the sun ; and, behold, the 
 tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter ; 
 
'HITTIER 717 
 
 and on the side of their oppressors there was power ; but they 
 had no comforter; " in July, 1839, increasing ill health com- 
 pels him to give up his journalistic duties, and he makes a 
 tour of'Western Pennsylvania, seeking health and working for 
 the an ti -slavery cause wherever he goes ; later he arranges for 
 petitions from every part of his congressional district, calling 
 for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and 
 the restriction of the slave-trade ; these petitions are denied 
 under a new congressional rule, whose author Whittier gives a 
 terrible poetic castigation in the Freeman in January, 1839; 
 in June, 1839, he is present at a national anti-slavery conven- 
 tion in Albany, and afterward visits Saratoga at the height of 
 the season as "a laughing philosopher; " thence by way of 
 Newport and New York to Amesbury, where he remains till 
 October, 1839, when he is. again at his desk in Philadelphia. 
 In February, 1840, his physician declares that Whittier is 
 affected with a serious heart trouble and that he must give up 
 his editorial work ; he accordingly publishes his valedictory, 
 February 20, 1840, and returns to Amesbury ; his continued ill 
 health compels him to give up an intended visit to the World's 
 Anti-Slavery Convention in London during the summer of 
 1840; he remains at Amesbury till April, 1841, when he 
 goes to New York, meets Joseph Sturges, the English philan- 
 thropist, then visiting this country, and, with Sturges, visits 
 Philadelphia, Wilmington, Baltimore, and Washington ; while 
 in Baltimore they visit several slave-pens; Whittier entertains 
 Sturges at Amesbury during the summer of 1841, and on his 
 departure for England in August, Sturges leaves with Lewis 
 Tappan $1,000, to be used by Whittier in travelling or in 
 any other way he may choose; in October, 1842, Whittier 
 receives from Lowell, then doing his first journalistic work as 
 editor of a new Boston magazine called the Pioneer, a request 
 for a poem, and sends him the lines entitled " To a Friend 
 on his Return from Europe;" Whittier's poem "Massa- 
 chusetts to Virginia," first published in the Liberator \ Janu- 
 
71 8 WHITTIER 
 
 ary 27, 1843, without his name, was inspired by the trial of 
 a fugitive slave in Boston, and was at once recognized as 
 Whittier's work; in May, 1843, Ticknor & Fields issue a 
 volume of his poems entitled " Lays of My Home and Other 
 Poems" the first of his published works from which Whit- 
 tier realized any financial return, as all of his poems previ- 
 ously published had been sold for the benefit of " the cause; " 
 all the twenty-three poems in this volume have been retained 
 in the poet's complete works ; the first four of his " Songs of 
 Labor " were contributed to the Democratic Review in 1845 
 and 1846; the rest appeared in the National Era under 
 Whittier's editorship; in March, 1844, at the request of 
 Lowell, he wrote "Texas" and "The Voice of New Eng- 
 land." 
 
 For several weeks during 1844 Whittier resides in 
 Boston, editing the Middlesex Sentinel ; for about two years 
 at this period he was also virtually editor of the Essex 
 (Amesbury) Transcript, though his name did not appear as 
 editor; he wrote "in a beautiful flowing hand, with seldom 
 an emendation or any interlining;" his series of papers 
 entitled " The Stranger in Lowell " were first printed in the 
 Transcript and afterward appeared in book form ; during the 
 year 1845 he aids in the campaign of the Free Soil Party 
 with vigorous satirical verse, much of it written anonymously ; 
 when the National Era is established at Washington as the 
 leading anti-slavery organ, in 1847, Whittier becomes assist- 
 ant or corresponding editor, and continues to hold this posi- 
 tion till 1860 ; his relation to the paper enables him to 
 retain his residence at Amesbury, where the ministrations of 
 his mother and sister contribute much to the preservation of 
 his health ; he writes " Randolph of Roanoke " in January, 
 1847, and "The Pine Tree " in September following; from 
 1847 to 1859 the Era contained over eighty of Whittier's 
 poems, including " Barclay of Ury," " The Angels of Buena 
 Vista," "Ichabod," "Maud Muller," and "The Witch's 
 
WHITTIER 719 
 
 Daughter," but the bulk of his work during these years 
 was done in prose ; his most notable prose work of this period 
 was " Margaret Smith's Journal," really an historical novel, 
 first published serially in the Era and afterward reprinted in 
 book form by Ticknor & Fields, in 1849; Whittier fre- 
 quently filled from eight to ten pages of a single issue of the 
 Era with his own prose contributions; in 1849 his poems 
 are issued in a fine illustrated octavo volume, which passes 
 rapidly through three editions, and brings to Whittier a con- 
 siderable financial return ; in 1850 another volume appears 
 containing the "Songs of Labor" and twenty-one mis- 
 cellaneous poems ; in 1850 Whittier also publishes his prose 
 volume entitled "Old Portraits and Modern Sketches;" 
 during 1850 also, against Sumner's will, Whittier persuades 
 him to accept the Free Soil nomination for United States 
 Senator a nomination that results in an election, and so is 
 the beginning of Sumner's career as a statesman ; during the 
 summer of 1850 Whittier entertains Lowell and Bayard 
 Taylor at Amesbury ; he is severely ill early in 1851; he 
 contributes "Moloch in State Street " to the Era in May, 
 1852 ; " The Panorama," written in 1855, was first published 
 in 1856 in a small volume containing also the poems entitled 
 "A Memory," "Burns," "Tauler," " The Barefoot Boy," 
 and " The Kansas Emigrants ; " during 1856 he first takes a 
 public stand in favor of woman suffrage, and supports Fre- 
 mont, writing for the campaign the poems entitled " What of 
 the Day ? " " The Pass of the Sierra," " To Pennsylvania," 
 " A Song for the Time," and that beginning "Beneath thy 
 Skies, November;" "The Mayflower" was also written in 
 1856; in 1857 Whittier loses his mother, to whom he had 
 been intensely devoted, and Ticknor & Fields publish, at his 
 request, the complete "blue and gold " edition of his poems; 
 he urges the omission of " Mogg Megone " from this edition, 
 but Fields insists on retaining it; Whittier, however, insists 
 on omitting the poems entitled " The Response," " Stanzas 
 
720 WHITT1ER 
 
 for the Times, 1844," "Address at the Opening of Penn- 
 sylvania Hall," and "The Album; " the second and third 
 of this list of poems were retained in the edition of 1888. 
 
 In 1857 Whittier aids in organizing the Atlantic Monthly, 
 and at the editorial rooms in Boston he frequently meets 
 Emerson, Mrs. Stowe, Lowell, Theodore Parker, Holmes, 
 Prescott, Motley, Norton, and other eminent contributors, 
 although, because of his delicate health, he is seldom present 
 at any of the famous monthly dinners given by the Atlantic ; 
 among his early poems in the Atlantic are the one on the 
 laying of the first ocean cable, "The Pipes at Lucknow," 
 and " Skipper Ireson's Ride; " in 1860 he publishes a volume 
 entitled "Home Ballads, Poems, and Lyrics," opening with 
 " The Witch's Daughter," afterward called " Mabel Martin," 
 and containing also "The Prophecy of Samuel Sewell," 
 "The Preacher," "To G. B.C.," "Brown of Ossawattomie," 
 "From Perugia," "The Peace of Europe," and "The 
 Prisoners of Naples;" in January, 1861, he voices his pro- 
 test against war in the poem "A Word for the Hour; " in 
 February, 1862, he publishes in the Atlantic his " Negro 
 Boat Song at Port Royal; " during the early years of the 
 war he writes also "Thy Will be Done," "The Battle 
 Autumn of 1862," " Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott" and 
 " The Watchers ;" in 1863 he publishes a volume entitled 
 "In War Time and Other Poems," including those just 
 mentioned and " Amy Wentworth," "Mountain Pictures," 
 "The Laurels," and " Barbara Frietchie ;" " Barbara Friet- 
 chie " first appears in the Atlantic in September, 1863, and 
 Whittier receives for the manuscript $150; during the same 
 month he commends the famous "emancipation proclama- 
 tion" of Fremont ; on receiving, in January, 1864, $340 as 
 his first royalties on the volume " In War Time," he writes, 
 " It makes me rich as Crcesus ; " his sister Elizabeth dies 
 September 3, 1864, and he writes, " The great motive of life 
 seems lost;" three weeks later he sends to the Atlantic 
 
WIIITTIER 721 
 
 "The Vanishers;" in 1864 he publishes "The Mantle of 
 St. John de Matha " and in 1865 " The Changeling," both 
 in the Atlantic ; on hearing of the passage of the constitu- 
 tional amendment abolishing slavery in the United States, in 
 February, 1865, he sends to the Independent " Laus Deo" 
 
 He begins " Snow Bound" really a memorial tribute to 
 his mother and sister in the summer of 1865, and writes to 
 Fields, " If I ever finish, I hope and trust it will be good; " 
 he sends it to Fields, October 3, 1865, but Fields returns it 
 with suggestions for several changes, most of which Whittier 
 adopts ; the poem is published early in 1866, and Whittier's 
 share of the profits of the first issue are $io,ooc ; between 
 1832 and 1865, besides an enormous amount of prose, he had 
 written nearly three hundred poems, one-third of them relat- 
 ing directly or indirectly to slavery ; in July, 1866, he writes 
 to a friend: "If my health allowed me to write, I could 
 make money easily now, as my anti-slavery reputation does 
 not injure me in the least at the present time. For twenty 
 years I was shut out from the favor of booksellers and maga- 
 zine editors, but I was enabled by rigid economy to live in 
 spite of them and to see the end of the infernal institution 
 that proscribed me; thank God for it!" he begins the 
 final arrangement of " The Tent on the Beach " in the sum- 
 mer of 1866, but ill health compels him to lay it aside; in 
 September, 1866, he sends to Mrs. Fields the little poem 
 " Our Master ; " during the same year appears a two-volume 
 edition of his prose works ; he completes " The Tent on the 
 Beach " in December, and it appears in February, 1867, and 
 sells, at first, at the rate of one thousand copies a day ; about 
 this time Whittier describes himself as " a bundle of nerves 
 for pain to experiment on ; " he writes " The Palatine "in 
 August, 1867, and meets Dickens in Boston during the fol- 
 lowing December, though ill health prevents him from at- 
 tending the readings of the novelist ; he is very ill during the 
 winter of 1867-68. 
 46 
 
722 WHITTIER 
 
 An illustrated edition of Whittier's poems is published in 
 1868 under the title "Among the Hills and Other Poems; " 
 " The Clear Vision " appears in the Atlantic in April, 1868 ; 
 the poem entitled "Among the Hills" first appeared in the 
 Atlantic in June, 1868, under the title of "The Wife: An Idyll 
 of Bearchamp Water," and was but half as long as in its pres- 
 ent form; during 1869 and 1870 Whittier writes "Howard 
 at Atlanta," "Marguerite," "The Pageant," and "In School 
 Days ;" during middle and later life he could not write or read 
 for half an hour continuously without suffering, a severe head- 
 ache a fact that accounts for much of Whittier's seeming 
 diffidence on public occasions ; he was also color-blind and 
 in later life somewhat deaf; in 1871 he publishes a volume 
 entitled "Miriam and Other Poems;" in 1871 he edits 
 "John Woolman's Journal" and a collection of juvenile 
 poems called " Child Life in Song," and translates into Eng- 
 lish verse the Danish story of " Volmer and Elsie; " in 1872 
 he publishes " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim " in a volume with 
 " Volmer and Elsie " and a dozen other poems ; in August of 
 this year he receives a severe shock when his house is struck 
 by lightning; during 1872 and 1873 he labors earnestly to 
 secure the rescinding of the legislative enactment censuring 
 Sumner for favoring the return of the Confederate flags ; the 
 effort fails at first, but Whittier finally succeeds, and the act 
 is rescinded ; late in 1873 he writes the ode now known as 
 "A Christmas Carmen," and sends it anonymously to Gil- 
 more, the bandmaster of the great Peace Jubilee, who re- 
 jects the ode; in 1874 Whittier writes but throws aside his 
 poem entitled "A Sea Dream," saying that it is "a poem 
 that the world can do without;" in its place he sends to 
 the Atlantic his "Golden Wedding of Longwood ; " dur- 
 ing 1874 he also adds eighty lines to "The Witch's Daugh- 
 ter," and rechristens it " Mabel Martin ; " early in 1875 he 
 entertains at Amesbury Garrison, Elizur Wright, and Samuel 
 Sewell, and speaks of the quartette as "four gray old abo- 
 
WHITTIER 723 
 
 litionists, dating back to 1832;" he sends "Lexington, 
 1775," to the Atlantic in March, 1875 ; during this year he 
 also publishes the collection of poems called " Hazel Blos- 
 soms/' and collaborates with Lucy Larcom in editing " Songs 
 of Three Centuries; " early in 1876, after Bryant, Lowell, and 
 Holmes had declined to write the hymn for the opening of 
 the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, Whittier yields to 
 importunities of his intimate friend, Bayard Taylor, and 
 writes the hymn for that occasion ; his niece Lizzie, who had 
 been the poet's housekeeper since the death of his sister, was 
 married in April, 1876, and thereafter Whittier made his 
 home during a large part of each year with three cousins 
 the Misses Johnson and Miss Woodman at Danvers, Mass., 
 in a house to which he gave the name of " Oak Knoll ; M he 
 really spent but little time at Amesbury during his later years, 
 but he retained his citizenship and his property there; during 
 the summer of 1876, by special appointment, Whittier meets 
 Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, who was a warm admirer of 
 the Quaker poet ; during his later years Whittier's favorite 
 summer residence is at the Bearchamp House, at West Ossipee, 
 N. H., where he writes "Among the Hills," " Sunset on the 
 Bearchamp," "Seeking a Waterfowl," and "The Voyage 
 of the Jettie; " he publishes "The Witch of Wenham " in 
 the Atlantic in April, 1876; in 1877, in response to tributes 
 to Whittier on his seventieth birthday, written for the Liter- 
 ary World by a score of the most eminent American writers, 
 he writes the sonnet beginning " Beside the milestone, where 
 the level sun." 
 
 Whittier remained an optimist till the end, and wrote to a 
 friend in 1881, "The Lord reigns ; our old planet is wheel- 
 ing slowly into fuller light. I despair of nothing good." 
 The tributes to his fame and genius during his later years 
 from all classes of people were both numerous and significant ; 
 during 1883 he publishes the volume called " The Bay of 
 Seven Islands and Other Poems," and writes for the Atlantic 
 
724 WHITTIER 
 
 the poem " At Last ; " in 188,5, at Tennyson's request, Whit- 
 tier writes the inscription for General Gordon's cenotaph in 
 Westminster; in 1886 he publishes a volume entitled " Saint 
 Gregory's Quest and Other Poems" sixteen poems, nearly 
 all written after his seventy-fifth year; during his last three 
 years he remains much at Amesbury, saying, " I seem nearer 
 to my mother and sister here ; " during 1888 he revises the 
 proofs of his poems and prose works for the complete seven- 
 volume " Riverside " edition of his works, saying, " I have a 
 strong desire to drown some of them [the poems] like so 
 many kittens ; " during 1890 he publishes for private circu- 
 lation among his friends the little volume of his earliest verses 
 entitled "At Sundown," which appeared publicly two years 
 later; in 1891 he writes to Holmes concerning death, "I 
 await the call with a calm trust in the eternal goodness;" 
 during 1891 he writes his lines on Lowell and the poems 
 " The Birthday Wreath " and " Between the Gates ; " during 
 the summer of 1892 he revises the proofs of his volume "At 
 Sundown ; " he suffers a paralytic shock on September 3, 1892, 
 and dies peacefully at Hampton Falls, N. H., September 7, 
 1892, while a relative recites his poem "At Last." 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON WHITTIER. 
 
 Stedman, E. C., " Poets of America." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mif- 
 
 flin & Co., 95-133. 
 Underwood, F. H., " Biography of Whittier." Boston, 1884, Osgood, 
 
 v. index. 
 Kennedy, W. S., "John G. Whittier." New York, 1892, Funk & 
 
 Wagnalls, v. index. 
 Richardson, C. F. , "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
 
 2: 172-187. 
 Whipple, E. P., " Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, 
 
 I : 68-71. 
 Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 
 
 73-75- 
 Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 294-296. 
 
WHITTIER . 725 
 
 Pickard, S. L., " Life and Letters of Whittier. " Boston, 1894, Hough- 
 ton, Mifflin & Co., 2 volumes, v. index. 
 
 Wendell, B., " StelligerL" New York, 1893, Scribner, 146-202. 
 
 Lowell, J. R., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1890, Houghton, Mifflin 
 & Co., 134, 135, and 450. 
 
 Mitford, Miss M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 
 Harper, 1851, 334-340. 
 
 Griswold, R. W., "The Poets of America." New York, 1872, James 
 Miller, 389-406. 
 
 May, S. J., "Some Recollections." Boston, 1869, Fields, 258-267. 
 
 Parton, J., "Some Noted Princes," etc. New York, 1885, Crowell, 
 
 319-323. 
 Bungay, G. W., "Off-hand Takings." New York, 1854,, Dewitt, 
 
 v. .index. 
 Gilder, J. L. and J. B., "Authors at Home." New York, 1888, Cas- 
 
 sell, 343-355- 
 Claflin, M. B., " Personal Recollections of Whittier." New York, 
 
 1893, Crowell, v. index. 
 
 Chautauquan, 16 : 299-301 (J. V. Cheney). 
 
 Century, 23 : 363-368 (E. S. Phelps) ; 8 : 38-50 (E. C. Stedman). 
 Cosmopolitan, 16 : 303-306 (C. F. Bates). 
 McCluris Magazine, 2: 125-129 (C. F. Bates); 7; 114-121 (E. S. 
 
 Phelps). 
 
 New England Magazine, 7 : 275-293 (W. S. Kennedy). 
 New World, 2 : 88-103 (J- W. Chadwick). 
 Good Words, 28 : 29-34 (F. H. Underwood). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 70 : 642-648 (G. E. Woodberry) 
 Critic, 18: 221, 222 (O. W. Holmes); 81 : 307, 308 (J. H. Morse). 
 Harper's Magazine, 86:338-357 (A. Fields); 68: 177-188 (H. P. 
 
 Spofford). 
 
 Arena, 15 : 376-384 (M. B. Claflin) ; 10 : 153-168 (W. H. Savage). 
 International Review, 3: 405-413 (B. Taylor). 
 ScribneSs Monthly, 18: 569-583 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Appletorfs Journal, 5 : 431-434 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 Lakeside Monthly, 5 : 365-367 (R. Collyer). 
 Independent, oft: 1258, 1259(8. L. Pickard). 
 Dial (Chicago), 9: 193-196 (M. B. Anderson). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Idyllic Flavor Homely Beauty. "Of our lead- 
 ing poets, Whittier was almost the only one who learned Nat- 
 
726 WH1TTIER 
 
 tire by working with her at all seasons, under the sky and in 
 the wood and field. . . . While chanting in behalf of 
 every patriotic or human effort of his time, he has been the 
 truest singer of our homestead or wayside life, and has rendered 
 all the legends of his region into familiar verse. ... As 
 a bucolic poet of his own section, rendering its pastoral life 
 and aspect, Whittier surpasses all rivals. ... To read 
 his verse was to recall the scent of the clover and apple-bloom, 
 to hear again the creak of the well-pole, the rattle of bars in the 
 lane the sights and freshness of youth passing for a moment, 
 a vision of peace over their battle-field." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Whittier, on the whole, has lived nearer the homely 
 heart and life of his northern countrymen than any other 
 American poet save Longfellow. . . . Unvexed by 
 literary envy and oblivious to mere fame, he became the 
 laureate of the ocean beach, the inland lake, the little wood 
 flower, and the divine sky." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 "It is not without perfect justice that ' Snow-Bound ' takes 
 rank with < The Cotter's Saturday Night' and 'The Deserted 
 Village; ' it belongs in this group as a faithful picture of hum- 
 ble life. .... All his affection for the soil on which he 
 was born went into it ; and no one ever felt more deeply that 
 attachment to the region of his birth which is the great spring 
 of patriotism. . . . It is the New England home entire, 
 with its characteristic scenes, its incidents of household life, 
 its Christian virtues." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " Like Burns and Cowper, Whittier is distinctively a rustic 
 poet. . . . His idyllic poetry savors of the soil and is full 
 of local allusions. . . . There are trees and trees at Oak 
 Knoll. . . . The house is of wood. ... In front 
 a luxuriant vine clusters about the eaves. On the front porch 
 a mocking-bird and a canary-bird fill the green silence with 
 gushes of melody: and near at hand, in his study in the wing 
 of the building, siis one with a singing pen and listens to their 
 song. To their song and to the murmur of the tall pines by 
 
WHITTIER 727 
 
 his window he listens, then looks into his heart and writes 
 this sweet-souled magician and craftily imprisons between 
 the covers of his books echoes of bird and tree music, bits of 
 blue sky, glimpses of green landscape, winding rivers, and 
 idyls of the snow all suffused and interfused with a glowing 
 atmosphere of human and divine love." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 11 Throughout the work of his sixty-seven years one feels 
 with growing admiration a constant simplicity of feeling and 
 of phrase, as pure as the country air he loved to breathe." 
 Barrett Wendell. 
 
 " So far as flavor of the soil went, he was far beyond Long- 
 fellow or Holmes or Lowell." T. W. Higginson. 
 
 " The poet himself calls the scenes in 'Snow-Bound' Flem- 
 ish pictures ; and it is true they have much of the homely 
 fidelity of Teniers, but they are far more than literal represen- 
 tations. The scenes glow with ideal beauty all the more for 
 their bucolic tone. The works and ways of the honest people 
 are almost photographically revealed." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " The birds which carolled over his head, the flowers 
 which grew under his feet, were as poetic as those to which 
 the Scottish ploughman had given perennial interest. Burns 
 taught him to detect the beautiful in the common." E. P. 
 Whipple. 
 
 " This exquisite poem [" Snow-Bound "] has no prototype in 
 English literature, unless Burns's " Cotter's Saturday Night " 
 be one, and it will be long, I fear, before it has a companion- 
 piece. It can be fully appreciated only by those who are New 
 England born and on whose heads the snows of fifty or sixty 
 winters have fallen." R. H. Stoddard. 
 
 "There is no custom of the country, common and simple 
 as it may be, sugar-camp and sleigh-ride, husking, apple-par- 
 ing, and the telling of the bees, that he does not fling his 
 charm about it." Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
WH1TTIER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " It was the pleasant harvest-time, 
 When cellar-bins are closely stowed, 
 And garrets bend beneath their load, 
 
 " And the old swallow-haunted barns 
 Brown-gabled, long, and full of seams 
 Through which the moted sunlight streams, 
 
 " And winds blow freshly in, to shake 
 The red plumes of the roosted cocks, 
 And the loose hay-mow's scented locks 
 
 " Are filled with summer's ripened stores, 
 Its odorous grass and barley sheaves, 
 From their low scaffolds to their eaves." 
 
 The Witch's Daughter. 
 
 " We fished her little trout-brook, knew 
 What flowers in wood and meadow grew, 
 What sunny hillsides, autumn-brown, 
 She climbed to shake the ripe nuts down, 
 Saw where in sheltered cove and bay 
 The ducks' black squadron anchored lay, 
 And heard the wild geese calling loud 
 Beneath the gray November cloud." Snow- Bound. 
 
 " Here is the place ; right over the hill 
 
 Runs the path I took ; 
 You can see the gap in the old wall still, 
 
 And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook. 
 
 *' There is the house, with the gate red-barred, 
 
 And the poplars tall ; 
 
 And the barn's brown length, and the cattle-yard, 
 And the white horns tossing above the wall. 
 
 " There are the bee-hives ranged in the sun ; 
 
 And down by the brink 
 
 Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o'errun, 
 Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink." 
 
 Telling the Bees. 
 
WHITTIER 729 
 
 2. Moral Energy Vehemence Intensity. 
 
 At first, the reader is inclined to think vehemence the most 
 essential quality of Whittier's style ; but a more careful reflec- 
 tion will convince him that the critics are right in maintain- 
 ing that his idyls will live long after his trumpet-blasts against 
 slavery have been forgotten. 
 
 " What is the great central element in our poet's character, 
 if it is not that deep, never-smouldering moral fervor, that 
 unquenchable love of freedom, that 
 
 ' Hate of tyranny, intense 
 And hearty in its vehemence,' 
 
 which, mixed with the beauty and melody of his soul, gives to 
 his pages a delicate glow as of gold-hot iron ; which crowned 
 him the laureate of freedom in his day, and imparts to his 
 utterances the manly ring of the prose of Milton and Hugo 
 and the poetry of Byron, Swinburne, and Whitman all poets 
 of freedom like himself ? He is occasionally nerved 
 
 to almost superhuman effort ; it is the battle-axe of Richard 
 thundering at the gates of Front de Bceuf. . . . Never 
 ceasing to express his high-born soul in burning invective 
 and scathing satire against the oppressor. . . . Another 
 powerful group of these anti-slavery poems is constituted by the 
 scornful mock-congratulatory productions ; such as the ' Hun- 
 ters of Men,' ' Clerical Oppressors,' 'The Yankee Girl,' 'A 
 Sabbath Scene,' ' Lines suggested by Reading a State Paper 
 wherein the Higher Law is Invoked to Sustain the Lower 
 One,' and 'The Pastoral Letter.' The sentences in these 
 stanzas cut like knives and sting like shot." W. S. Kennedy. 
 " Whittier had always lived in a region of moral ideas, and 
 this anti -slavery inspiration inflamed his moral ideas into 
 moral passion and moral wrath. If Garrison may be con- 
 sidered the prophet of anti-slavery and Phillips its orator 
 and Mrs. Stowe its novelist and Sumner its statesman, there 
 can be no doubt that Whittier was its poet. Quaker as he 
 
73 WHITTIER 
 
 was, his martial lyrics had something of the energy of the 
 primitive bard urging on hosts to battle. Every word was a 
 blow. ... He roused, condensed, and elevated the 
 public sentiment against slavery. The poetry was as genuine 
 as the wrath was terrific, and many a political time-server who 
 was proof against Garrison's hottest denunciations and Phillips's 
 most stinging invectives, quailed before Whittier's smiting 
 rhymes. . . . He seems, in some of his lyrics, to pour 
 out his blood with his lines. There is a rush of passion in his 
 verse which sweeps everything along with it. ... The 
 strong qualities of his mind, acting at the suggestion of con- 
 science, produce a kind of military morality which uses all 
 the deadly arms of verbal warfare. . . . His invective is 
 merciless and undistinguishing ; he almost screams with rage 
 and indignation." E. P. Whipple. 
 " And he's prone to repeat his own lyrics sometimes ; 
 
 Not his best, though ; for those are struck off at white heats 
 When the heart in his breast like a trip-hammer beats, 
 And could ne'er be repeated again any more 
 Than they could have been carefully plotted before." 
 
 James Russell Lowell. 
 
 "That one [poem] entitled simply Stanzas,' has an almost 
 terrible force. . . . Evidently written in a white heat, 
 the language is at once terse and vehement, and the sound of 
 the lines is like the clashing of swords. The thoughts and 
 emotions are sublime, as happens only in the most exalted state 
 of the creative soul. Such a poem could never have been com- 
 posed. It is as difficult to quote from it as to give a segment 
 of a moving wave of lava. . . . What a pleasure and 
 what a surprise it would be to see such vigorous strokes in a 
 magazine to-day. . . . It [" Ichabod "] contains more 
 storages of electric energy than any we remember in our 
 time. . . . The reply of Whittier ["The Pastoral Letter"] 
 is filled with grim sarcasm and indignant invective. . . . 
 The lines hit like rapier thrusts." F. H. Underwood. 
 
WHITTIER 731 
 
 " Peaceful thy message, yet for struggling right 
 
 When slavery's gauntlet in our face was flung 
 While timid weaklings watched the dubious fight 
 No herald's challenge more defiant rung." 
 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
 " Nothing can exceed, nothing can equal, the wild power 
 of some of these songs [" Voices of Freedom "], now soaring 
 in scorn, now writhing in angry shame, rising with indignant 
 outcry, burning in fiery eloquence ; and all moving to the 
 magic of music and the pathos of their undercurrent of sor- 
 row." Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 11 Whittier is a poet militant, a crusader, whose moral 
 weapons since he must disown the carnal were keen of edge 
 and seldom in their scabbards. . . . At an age when 
 bardlings are making sonnets to a mistress's eyebrow, he was 
 facing mobs at Plymouth, Boston, Philadelphia. 
 The poet's deep-voiced scorn rendered his anti-slavery verse 
 a very different thing from Longfellow's, and made the hearer 
 sure of his 'effectual calling.' " E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " His anti-slavery poems were earnest and indignant; ear- 
 nest in their maintenance of the freedom of all men without 
 regard to color, and indignant at the persecutions of those 
 who sought to restore the rights which had been wrested from 
 them. . . . Holding the opinions that he did, and hav- 
 ing the temperament that he had, Mr. Whittier could no more 
 have stifled his fiery denunciations of slavery than the old 
 Hebrew seers could have stifled their dark and fateful prophe- 
 cies."^. H. Stoddard. 
 
 11 Some of his most indignant and sharpest invective was 
 directed against Pope Pius IX., who stood to Whittier as the 
 very type of that Christian obstructiveness to the work of 
 Christ which in a lesser degree he had seen in his own coun- 
 try, and had seen always only to express the heart-felt scorn 
 which descended to him with his Quaker birthright." 
 G. E. Woodberry. 
 
732 WHITTIER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " My brain took fire : ' Is this,' I cried, 
 ' The end of prayer and preaching ? 
 Then down with pulpit, down with priest, 
 And give us Nature's teaching !' 
 
 " Foul shame and scorn be on ye all 
 Who turn the good to evil, 
 And steal the Bible from the Lord, 
 And give it to the Devil ! 
 
 " Than garbled text or parchment law 
 I own a statute higher ; 
 And God is true, though every book 
 And every man 's a liar." A Sabbath Scene. 
 
 " Is the old Pilgrim spirit quenched within us, 
 
 Stoops the strong manhood of our souls so low, 
 That Mammon's lure or Party's wile can win us 
 To silence now ? 
 
 " What ! shall we henceforth humbly ask as favors 
 
 Rights all our own ? In madness shall we barter, 
 For treacherous peace, the freedom Nature gave us, 
 God and our charter ? " A Stimmer. 
 
 " And what are ye who strive with God 
 
 Against the ark of his salvation, 
 Moved by the breast of prayer abroad, 
 
 With blessings for a dying nation ? 
 What, but the stubble and the hay 
 
 To perish, even as flax consuming, 
 With all that bars His glorious way, 
 Before the brightness of His coming ? " 
 
 The Pastoral Letter. 
 
 3. Faith Religious Fervor Piety. " It is charac- 
 teristic of the man that his first poem should be of a relig- 
 ious nature. . . . The impression made upon the mind 
 is one of harmony and solemn stateliness, not unlike that of 
 
WHITTIER 733 
 
 Thanatopsis,' composed by Bryant when he was about the 
 same age as was Whittier when he wrote the ' Deity.' 
 Many of Whittier's purely religious poems are among the most 
 exquisite and beautiful ever written. The tender feeling, the 
 warm-hearted trustfulness, and the reverent touch of his 
 hymns speak directly to our hearts." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " Whittier, though creedless, is one of the most religious 
 of our poets. ... In these days of scepticism as to the 
 possibility of the communication of the Divine Mind with the 
 human, it is consolation to read his poem on ' The Eternal 
 Goodness,' especially this stanza 
 
 ' I know not where His islands lift 
 
 Their fronded palms in air ; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond His love and care.' " 
 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " In the popular sense of the word, Whittier has no theol- 
 ogy. It was one of the secrets of his great religious influence 
 that he sang only of the simple essentials of faith. 
 As he did not write of small subjects, so he did not take small 
 views of large subjects. He was as free from the cage of sec- 
 tarianism as a Danvers thrush rising from the tree-tops of Oak 
 Knoll on a May morning. He soared when he sang. He 
 poured out the truths that men must live by and that they 
 can afford to die by or die for. ... I have sometimes 
 thought that I would rather give a man on the verge of a 
 great moral lapse a marked copy of Whittier than any other 
 book in our language. In a word, he represents the broadest, 
 because he represents the purest elements of life." Elizabeth 
 Stuart Phelps. 
 
 " Not thine to lean on priesthood's broken reed ; 
 
 No barriers caged thee in a bigot's fold. 
 Did zealots ask to syllable thy creed, 
 
 Thou saidst ' Our Father,' and thy creed was told." 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes. 
 
734 WHITTTER 
 
 " Whittier is the most religious of secular poets, . . . 
 the Galahad of modern poets, not emasculate, but vigorous 
 and pure ; he has borne the Christian's shield of faith and 
 sword of the Spirit. . . . Whittier's religious mood is 
 far from being superficial and temporary. It is the life of his 
 genius, out of which flow his ideas of earthly and heavenly 
 content. ... It is difficult to see how a poem for sacred 
 music, or for such an occasion, could be more adequately 
 wrought [than Whittier's "Centennial Hymn."] . . . 
 In fine, the element of faith gives a tone to the whole range 
 of his verse both religious and secular." E. C. Stedman. 
 " The faith that lifts, the courage that sustains, 
 
 These thou wert sent to teach : 
 Hot blood of battle beating in thy veins, 
 Is twinned to a gentle speech." 
 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " His lyrics and idyls of the plain New England home, and 
 his serene hymns of religious trust> rise from the pure depths of 
 a sincere soul." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " Whittier, alone, is religious in a high and inward sense. 
 . . . Some imperfections cling to all souls; but few have 
 been observed in our time so well poised, so pure, and so 
 stainless as his. . . . The ' Occasional Poems ' are 
 characterized by an intense religious feeling, which melts the 
 heart of any man who has lived among primitive Christians 
 and known what simple and natural piety is. ... The 
 religious element in Whittier's poems is something vital and 
 inseparable. The supremacy of moral ideas is indeed incul- 
 cated by almost all great poets." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " Whatever else Whittier was, he was a profoundly religious 
 man, who could not help taking life in earnest." Barrett 
 Wendell. 
 
 " His expression of the religious feeling is always noble and 
 impressive. He is one of the very few whose poems, written 
 under the fervor of religious emotion, have taken a higher 
 
WHITTIER 735 
 
 range and become true hymns. Several of these are already 
 adopted into the books of praise." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 1 'Through all his work runs the deep religious sense of rest 
 in the shadow of the Everlasting Wings, despite his struggles, 
 and let what will betide." Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 If the consensus of criticism were wanting at this point, the 
 poet has given us the following picture of his own religious 
 nature in the beautiful poem entitled " My Namesake : " 
 
 " He worshipped as his fathers did, 
 
 And kept the faith of childish days, 
 And, howsoe'er he strayed or slid, 
 He loved the good old ways. 
 
 " While others trod the altar stairs 
 He faltered like the publican ; 
 And, while they praised as saints, his prayers 
 Were those of sinful man. 
 
 " For, awed by Sinai's Mount of Law, 
 The trembling faith alone sufficed, 
 That, through its cloud and flame, he saw 
 The sweet, sad face of Christ." 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I see the wrong that round me lies, 
 
 I feel the guilt within ; 
 I hear, with groan and travail-cries, 
 The world confess its sin. 
 
 " Yet, in the maddening maze of things, 
 
 And tossed by storm and flood, 
 To one fixed trust my spirit clings : 
 I know that God is good ! 
 
 I long for household voices gone ; 
 
 For vanished smiles I long, 
 But God hath led my dear ones on, 
 
 And He can do no wrong. 
 
 2 he Eternal Goodness. 
 
736 WHITTIER 
 
 " I have no answer for myself or thee, 
 Save that I learned beside my mother's knee ; 
 * All is of God that is, and is to be ; 
 And God is good.' Let this suffice us still, 
 Resting in childlike trust upon his will 
 Who moves to his great ends unthwarted by the ill." 
 
 Trust. 
 
 " We see not, know not ; all our way 
 Is night, with Thee alone is day ; 
 From out the torrent's troubled drift, 
 Above the storm our prayers we lift : 
 Thy will be done. 
 
 " We take with solemn thankfulness 
 Our burden up, nor ask it less, 
 And count it joy that even we 
 May suffer, serve, or wait for Thee, 
 
 Whose will be done." Thy Will Be Done. 
 
 4. Humanitarianism Sympathy. In the poem en- 
 titled " My Namesake " Whittier justly says of himself: 
 
 " He loved the good and wise, but found 
 
 His human heart to all akin 
 Who met him on the common ground 
 Of suffering and sin. 
 
 " Whate'er his neighbor might endure 
 Of pain or grief his own became ; 
 For all the ills he could not cure 
 He held himself to blame." 
 
 " It will be seen that Whittier has not limited his sympa- 
 thies to oppressed Africans nor even to his own persecuted 
 people ; his generous spirit takes in the whole of suffering hu- 
 manity. The wrongs of the Indian are often dwelt upon by 
 him ; the prisoner for debt has a share of his pity; and with 
 all his energy he has protested against capital punishment for 
 crime. . . . [He is] a chivalrous philanthropist pour- 
 
WHITT1ER 737 
 
 ing out his whole heart in lyrics for the poor and oppressed." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " It has been said until it says itself that Whittier was the 
 people's poet. This is true ; but he was more than that. He 
 was the poet of a broad humanity. . . . He spent him- 
 self on the great needs of humanity, and the great heart of 
 humanity answered him. He went to that as straight as a cry 
 of nature ; and he uplifted it as truly as the hand of Heaven. 
 The common people heard him gladly. He stands apart in 
 their choice and their affection, even from the dearest of 
 their great plutarchy of American poets to which he be- 
 longed. . . . The people loved him because he loved the 
 people. It was his honor that he loved them nobly. He did 
 not sink to their small or special phases. He sings to the 
 strength, not to the weakness of the soul ; he does not con- 
 ciliate passion and surrender ; he suggests prayer and power ; 
 and as a substitute for temptation he enforces aspiration." 
 Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. 
 
 " It was no personal ambition that made Whittier the psalm- 
 ist of the anti-slavery movement. . . . The suffering of 
 man for man, the cry of the human, never fail to move him. 
 He celebrates all brave deeds and acts of renunciation. The 
 heroism of martyrs and resistants, of the Huguenots, the Vau- 
 dois, the Quakers, the English reformers, serves him for many 
 a ballad. . . . His most vivid pictures are of scenes 
 which lie near his heart and relate to common life to the 
 love and longing, the simple joys and griefs of his neighbors 
 at work and rest and worship." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Wherever he discovers the talisman of intellect he recog- 
 nizes a brother. . . . He gives to humanity the songs he 
 might have given to the eternal art." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 11 There is room, even in the United States, for such a func- 
 tion as that of poet of the people ; and here Whittier filled a 
 mission apart from that of the other members of his particular 
 group of New England bards." T. W. Higginson. 
 47 
 
738 WHiTTIER 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Than web of Persian loom most rare, 
 
 Or soft divan, 
 
 Better the rough rock, bleak and bare, 
 Or hollow tree which man may share 
 
 With suffering man. 
 
 " I hear another voice : ' The poor 
 
 Are thine to feed ; 
 Turn not the outcast from thy door, 
 Nor give to bonds and wrong once more 
 Whom God hath freed."' 
 
 In the Evil Days. 
 
 " Let foplings sneer, let fools deride, 
 
 Ye heed no idle scorner ; 
 Free hands and hearts are still your pride 
 And duty done, your honor." 
 
 The Shoemakers. 
 
 " In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and sea below, 
 Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen 
 
 know ; 
 
 God's stars and silence taught thee, as his angels only can, 
 That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is 
 
 man." The Branded Hand. 
 
 " For gifts in His name of food and rest 
 The tents of Islam of God are blest ; 
 Thou who hast faith in the Christ above, 
 Shall the Koran teach thee the Law of Love ? 
 O Christian ! open thy heart and door, 
 Cry east and west to the wandering poor : 
 'Whoever thou art whose need is great, 
 In the name of Christ the Compassionate 
 And Merciful One, for thee I wait ! ' " Charity. 
 
WHITTIER 739 
 
 5. Consecration Inspiration. Like Milton, Whit- 
 tier seems continually to be impressed with the thought that 
 he has been divinely called and set apart for his high mission 
 of song. Oliver Johnson has called him " the Prophet Bard 
 of America." 
 
 ''The singer would seem to have felt himself set apart for 
 God's great purposes ; he knew the burden of the prophet, 
 and the vision of Ezekiel had been his ; and, like one who is 
 an instrument in the use of Powers above and beyond, he 
 sighs, 
 
 ' Oh, not of choice for themes of public wrong 
 I leave the green and pleasant paths of song.' " 
 
 Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 The same estimate of Whittier has prompted Stedman to 
 address to him a volume of poems, with the inscription "Ad 
 Vatem" " For surely," adds Stedman, " no aged servant, 
 his eyes having seen in good time the Lord's salvation, ever 
 was more endowed with the love and reverence of a chosen 
 people." Lowell, too, implies the same estimate when he 
 addresses Whittier as follows : 
 
 " All honor and praise to the right-hearted bard, 
 Who was true to the Voice when such service was hard." 
 
 " Poetry seems never to have been a pursuit to him, but a 
 charge which was intrusted to him and which he had to de- 
 liver when the spirit moved him, well or ill, as it happened ; 
 but honestly, earnestly, and prayerfully." jR. H. Stoddard. 
 
 "They [" Voices of Freedom"] were uttered at the call of 
 duty and encouraged by the heavenly influences. The bur- 
 den was upon the poet as upon the prophets of the Jews. 
 Whittier never faltered in his mission. . . . His work in 
 this world ... has been inspired always by God and 
 humanity. . . . He was a psalmist under a divine call." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 "The necessity laid on him as a poet was accepted by 
 
74O WHITTIER 
 
 Whittier with the glad and solemn earnestness of a prophet ; 
 and for sixty years he was more influential as a teacher of re 
 ligion than any other man in America." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " In his outbursts against oppression and his cries unto 
 the Lord, we recognize the prophetic fervor, still nearer its 
 height in some of his personal poems, which popular instinct 
 long ago attributed to him." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Whittier was not only the trumpeter of the Abolitionists, 
 in those dark but splendid days of fighting positive and tangi- 
 ble wrong ; he was the very trumpet itself, and he must have 
 felt sometimes that the breath of the Lord blew through him." 
 R. W. Gilder. 
 
 " Hermit of Amesbury, thou too hast heard, 
 Voices and melodies from beyond the gates, 
 And speakest only when thy soul is stirred." 
 
 Longfellow. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " So let it be. In God's own might 
 We gird us for the coming fight, 
 And, strong in Him whose cause is ours, 
 In conflict with unholy powers, 
 We grasp the weapons He has given : 
 The Light and Truth and Love of Heaven." 
 
 The Moral Warfare. 
 
 " And if, in our un worthiness, 
 Thy sacrificial wine we press ; 
 If from Thy ordeal's heated bars 
 Our feet are seamed with crimson scars, 
 Thy will be done ! 
 
 " If, for the age to come, this hour 
 Of trial hath vicarious power, 
 Ami, blest by Thee, our present pain 
 Be Liberty's eternal gain, 
 Thy will be done ! 
 
WHITTIER 741 
 
 " Strike, Thou the Master, we Thy keys, 
 The anthem of the destinies ! 
 The minor of Thy loftier strain, 
 Our hearts shall breathe the old refrain : 
 Thy will be done ! " Thy Will be Done. 
 
 " We wait beneath the furnace-blast 
 
 The pangs of transformation ; 
 Not painlessly doth God recast 
 And mould anew the nation. 
 Hot burns the fire 
 Where wrongs expire ; 
 Nor spares the hand 
 That from the land 
 Uproots the ancient evil. 
 
 " Then let the selfish lip be dumb, 
 
 And hushed the breath of sighing ; 
 Before the joy of peace must come 
 The pains of purifying. 
 God give us grace 
 Each in his place 
 To bear his lot, 
 And, murmuring not, 
 Endure and wait and labor ! " 
 
 Luther's Hymn. 
 
 6. Nationalism Sectionalism. When Whittier was 
 but thirty-nine years old, Griswold said of him : "He may 
 reasonably be styled a national poet. His works breathe 
 affection for and faith in our republican polity and unshackled 
 religion." The later productions of the poet have caused 
 both American and foreign critics to adopt Griswold's estimate. 
 But Whittier is national because he is sectional because the 
 profoundest moral and political ideas of his particular section 
 have gradually permeated the entire Union. Francis Park- 
 man once toasted the Quaker poet as follows: " The Poet of 
 New England. His genius drew its nourishment from her 
 
742 WHITTIER 
 
 soil ; his pages are the mirror of her outward nature and the 
 strong utterance of her inward life." 
 
 " From the day, now more than thirty years ago, when he 
 wrote : 
 
 ' For a pale hand was beckoning 
 
 The Huguenot on, 
 And in blackness and ashes 
 Behind was St. John/ 
 
 to his last idyl of New England life, he has rarely chosen a 
 foreign theme, however seductive, or an ancient legend, unless 
 it could be made to embody some aspiration of his large and 
 loving humanity." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " Whittier was distinctively a local poet, a New Englander ; 
 but to acknowledge this does not diminish his honor, nor is 
 he thereby set in a secondary place. . . . New England 
 had, moreover, this advantage, that it was destined to set the 
 stamp of its character upon the larger nation in which it was 
 an element ; so that if Whittier be regarded, as he sometimes 
 is, as a representative American poet, it is not without justice. 
 He is really national so far as the spirit of New England has 
 passed into the nation at large. . . . There can be little 
 question too, that he is a representative of a far larger portion 
 of the American people than any other of the elder poets." 
 G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 Stedman indorses Parkman in calling Whittier the " poet of 
 New England;" but he qualifies this estimate of Whittier's 
 thought and genius by adding that " this hive of individuality 
 [New England] has sent out swarms, and scattered its ideas 
 like pollen throughout the northern belt of our States. As far 
 as these have taken hold, modified by change and experience, 
 New England stands for the nation and her singer for the na- 
 tional poet. . . . All in all, and more than others, he 
 has read the heart of New England, and expressed the con- 
 victions of New England at her height of moral supremacy. 
 . . . But he was the singer of what was not an empty 
 
WHITTIER 743 
 
 day, and of a section whose movement became that of a na- 
 tion, and whose purpose in the end was grandly consum- 
 mated." 
 
 " ' Snow-Bound ' is our one national idyl, the perfect poem 
 of New England winter life." ft. W. Gilder. 
 
 "He is in the highest degree patriotic, American. He 
 loves America because it is the land of freedom. ... If 
 anybody will take the trouble to glance over the complete 
 works of Whittier, he or she will find that one of the pre- 
 dominant characteristics of his writings is their indigenous 
 quality, their national spirit. Indeed, this is almost too no- 
 torious to need mention. He, if any one, merits the proud 
 title of ' A Representative American Poet.' His whole soul 
 is on fire with love of country. As is the case of Whitman, 
 his country is his bride, and upon it he has showered 
 all the affectionate wealth of his nature. . . . He has a 
 .distinctive national spirit or vision ; he is democratic in his 
 feelings, and treats of indigenous subjects." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " The home-bred singer, like so many of his predecessors, 
 framed the simple chant of that which he best knew. . . . 
 The young editor in various Eastern cities never lost his con- 
 stant and affectionate memories of the lovely Essex county 
 which gave him birth ; and he carried into his political work 
 the placid strength of the Merrimack in its familiar meadows 
 near the sea. His genius is wholly instinctive and national." 
 C. P. Richardson. 
 
 " His themes have been mainly chosen from his own times 
 and country, from his own neighborhood, even. 
 Whittier has done as much for the scenery of New England as 
 Scott for that of Scotland. . . . One quality above all 
 others in Whittier his innate and unstudied Americanism . 
 has rendered him alike acceptable to his countrymen and to 
 his kindred beyond the sea." James Grant Wilson. 
 
 "John Greenleaf Whittier is, in some respects, the most 
 American of all the American poets. . . . It is safe to 
 
744 WHITTIER 
 
 say that he has been less influenced by other literature than 
 any of our poets with the exception, perhaps, of Bryant." 
 . H. Stoddard. 
 
 " To our own mind, Mr. Whittier is perhaps the most 
 peculiarly American poet of any that our country has pro- 
 duced. The woods and waterfowl of Bryant belong as much 
 to one land as to another ; and all the rest of our singers : 
 Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, and their brethren with the 
 single exception of Joaquin Miller might as well have been 
 born in the land of Shakespeare and Milton and Byron as in 
 their own. But Whittier is entirely the poet of his own soil. 
 All through his verse we see the elements that created it." 
 Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 11 Our father's God! From out whose hand 
 The centuries fall like grains of sand, 
 We meet to-day, united, free, 
 And loyal to our land and Thee ; 
 To thank Thee for the era done 
 And trust Thee for the opening one. 
 
 " Thou, who hast here in concord furled 
 The war-flags of a gathered world, 
 Beneath our Western skies fulfil 
 The Orient's mission of good will ; 
 And, freighted with love's Golden Fleece, 
 Send back its Argonauts of peace." 
 
 Centennial Hymn. 
 
 " The riches of the Commonwealth 
 
 Are free, strong minds, and hearts of health ; 
 And more to her than gold or grain, 
 The cunning hand and cultured brain. 
 
 " For well she keeps her ancient stock, 
 The stubborn strength of Pilgrim Rock. 
 And still maintains, with milder laws 
 And clearer light, the Good Old Cause !" Our State. 
 
WHITTIER 745 
 
 " We give thy natal day to hope, 
 
 O Country of our love and prayer ! 
 Thy way is down no fatal slope, 
 But up to freer sun and air. 
 
 " Tried as by furnace-fires, and yet 
 
 By God's grace only stronger made ; 
 In future task before thee set 
 
 Thou shalt not lack the old-time aid. 
 
 " The fathers sleep, but men remain 
 
 As wise, as true, as brave as they ; 
 Why count the loss and not the gain ? 
 The best is that we have to-day." Our Country. 
 
 7. Genius for Ballad-Making Lyrical Power. 
 
 " We have no American ballad-writer that is, writer of bal- 
 lads founded on our native history and tradition who can be 
 compared with him, either in the range or skilful treatment 
 of his material." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " These fresh improvisations [ballads] are as perfect works 
 of art as the finest Greek marbles. . . . Such ballads as 
 The Witch's Daughter ' and ' Telling of the Bees ' are as 
 absolutely faultless productions as Wordsworth's ' We are 
 Seven ' and his * Lucy Gray,' or as Uhland's ' Des S anger' s 
 .Pluck," 1 or William Blake's ' Mary.' . . . The period in 
 Whittier's life from about 1858 to 1868 we may call the Bal- 
 lad Decade; for within this time were produced most of his 
 immortal ballads. We say immortal, believing that if all 
 else that he has written shall perish, his finest ballads will 
 carry his name down to remote posterity. . . . 'The 
 Tent on the Beach ' is mainly a series of ballads ; and ' Snow- 
 Bound,' although not a ballad, is still a narrative poem closely 
 allied to this species of poetry, the difference between a ballad 
 and an idyl being that one is made to be sung and the other 
 to be read ; both narrate events as they occur, and leave to 
 the reader all sentiments of reflection." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
746 WHTTTIER 
 
 " His poem itself [" Cassandra South wick "] can scarcely 
 be overrated. The march of the verse has something that re- 
 minds us of the rhythm of Macaulay's fine classical ballads, 
 something which is resemblance,, not imitation." Mary 
 Russell Mitford. 
 
 "Almost alone among American poets he has revived the 
 legends of his neighborhood in verse, and his * Floyd Ireson ' 
 is among the best of modern ballads, surpassed by none save 
 Scott, if even by him." -James Grant Wilson. 
 
 " In reality, he has managed the ballad form with more 
 skill than other measures." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " There can be no question as to Whittier's genius for 
 ballad-making."^. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Lyrics such as 'Telling the Bees,' 'Maud Muller,' and 
 ' My Playmate ' are miniature classics ; of this kind are those 
 which confirmed his reputation and still make his volumes 
 real household books of song." E. C. Stedman. 
 " There was ne'er a man born who had more of the swing 
 Of the true lyric bard and all that kind of thing." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Then rose up John de Matha 
 
 In the strength the Lord Christ gave, 
 And begged through all the land of France 
 The ransom of the slave. 
 
 " ' God save us ! ' cried the captain, 
 ' For nought can us avail ; 
 Oh, woe betide the ship that lacks 
 Her rudder and her sail ! 
 
 " ' Behind us are the Moormen ; 
 At sea we sink or strand ; 
 There's death upon the water, 
 There's death upon the land I ' 
 
WHITTIER 747 
 
 " Then up spake John de Matha : 
 God's errands never fail ! 
 Take thou the mantle which I wear, 
 And make of it a sail.' 
 
 " They raised the cross-wrought mantle, 
 The blue, the white, the red ; 
 And straight before the wind off-shore 
 The ship of Freedom spread." 
 
 The Mantle of St. John De Matha. 
 
 " They bound him on the fearful rack, 
 
 When, through the dungeon's vaulted dark, 
 He saw the light of shining robes, 
 And knew the face of good St. Mark. 
 
 " Then sank the iron rack apart, 
 The cords released their cruel clasp, 
 The pincers, with the teeth of fire, 
 Fell broken from the torturer's grasp." 
 
 The Legend of St. Mark. 
 
 i( A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying friend was 
 nigh, 
 
 I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw it in his eye ; 
 
 And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice, so kind to me, 
 Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea, 
 
 II ' Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish 
 
 gold, 
 
 From keel-piece up to deck-plank, the roomage of her hold, 
 By the living God who made me ! I would sooner in your bay 
 Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child awny ! ' ' 
 
 Cassandra Southwick. 
 
 8. Power of Characterization. " The two poems 
 upon Sumner are eminent specimens of careful study and 
 strong portraiture. The same may be said of Dr. Howe, of 
 Mrs. Keene, of Webster in 'The Lost Occasion 'of Field 
 and Taylor and still more of the touching and matchless 
 eulogy of Burns. The concluding stanzas of the last-men- 
 tioned poem are so full of tenderness, shadowed by inevitable 
 
748 WHITTIER 
 
 regret, so fervent in the appreciation of genius, and so throb- 
 bing with manly love, that it is hard for a man of sensibility 
 to read them without tears. . . . The language of his 
 genius was manifested in ' Randolph of Roanoke,' a magnifi- 
 cent tribute to the memory of that great man, and all the 
 more so in that it was wrung from the lips of an opponent. 
 As a piece of character-painting I know not where to look 
 for its equal. . . . He is a remarkable critic of character, 
 as he proved in his ' Ichabod,' in ' Sumner,' and in the 
 poem entitled ' My Namesake,' a keen, searching examination 
 of his mental qualities and of the intention and scope of his 
 poetry." F, H. Underwoo'd. 
 
 11 In his tribute to the eminent men and women of his 
 day, ... we observe a fine discrimination of character 
 and the power of placing mental and moral traits in high 
 relief. . . . As a piece of character-painting [Randolph 
 of Roanoke] I know not where to look for its equal, and 
 the marvel is that the portrait of this great slave-hplder should 
 have been drawn so justly by such a partisan as Whittier. 
 ' The Barefoot Boy ' is an exquisite character- 
 study, which, as far as my recollection goes, has no parallel 
 in English poetry." It. H. Stoddard. 
 
 " As a writer of personal tributes, whether paeans or mono- 
 dies, the reform bard, with his peculiar faculty of characteri- 
 zation, has been happily gifted. . . . The conception of 
 * Ichabod ' is most impressive. Those darkening lines were 
 graven too deep for obliteration." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Reference should be made to the numerous personal 
 tributes often full of grace, of tender feeling, and of true 
 honor paid to the humble which he was accustomed to lay as 
 his votive wreath on the graves of his companions. 
 The verses to Garrison and Sumner, naturally stand first in 
 fervor and range as well as in interest." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " Their [his characters'] likeness canvas never will so well 
 repeat." Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " One language held his heart and lip, 
 
 Straight onward to his goal he trod, 
 And proved the highest statesmanship 
 Obedience to the voice of God. 
 
 " No wail was in his voice ; none heard, 
 
 When treason's storm-cloud blackest grew, 
 The weakness of a doubtful word ; 
 His duty, and the end, he knew. 
 
 " For there was nothing base or small 
 Or craven in his soul's broad plan ; 
 Forgiving all things personal, 
 He hated only wrong to man." 
 
 On Charles Sumner. 
 
 " Not for rapt hymn nor woodland lay, 
 
 Too grave for smiles, too sweet for tears ; 
 We speak his praise who wears to-day 
 The glory of his seventy years. 
 
 11 When Peace brings Freedom in her train, 
 
 Let happy lips his songs rehearse ; 
 His life is now his noblest strain, 
 His manhood better than his verse." 
 
 Bryant on his Birthday. 
 
 11 His still the keen analysis 
 
 Of men and moods, electric wit, 
 Free play of mirth, and tenderness 
 To heal the slightest wound from it. 
 
 " And his the pathos touching all 
 
 Life's sins and sorrows and regrets, 
 Its hopes, its fears, its final call 
 And rest beneath the violets. 
 
 "His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
 
 The thoughtful tide beneath it rolled, 
 The wisdom of the latter days, 
 
 And tender memories of the old." Our Autocrat. 
 
7 SO WHITTIER 
 
 9. Dexterous Use of Proper Names. Whittier's 
 fluency has been the theme of general remark. It is perhaps 
 nowhere better illustrated than in the remarkable way in 
 which he blends formidable proper names into smooth 
 verse. 
 
 "The Indian names are made as musical as Homer's 
 enumeration of the Greek ships." Harriet Prescott Spofford. 
 
 "That he had a certain amount of natural ear is shown by 
 his use of proper names, in which, after his early period of 
 Indian experiments had passed, he rarely erred." T. W. 
 Higginson. 
 
 " The musical nomenclature of the red aborigines is finely 
 handled, and such words as Pennacook, Babboosuck, Coutoo- 
 cook, Bashaba, and Weetamoc chime out here and there 
 along the pages with as silvery a sweetness as the Tuscan words 
 in Macaulay's 'Lays.' ' W.S. Kennedy. 
 
 " Through thee her Merrimacs and Agrochooks 
 And many a name uncouth even gracious looks." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Squirrels which fed where nuts fell thick 
 In the gravelly bed of the Otternic ; 
 And small wild hens, in reed-snares caught, 
 From the banks of Sondargadee brought ; 
 
 " Pike and perch from the Suncook taken, 
 Nuts from the trees of the Black Hills shaken, 
 Cranberries picked from the Squamscot bog, 
 And grapes from the vines of the Piscataquog." 
 
 The Bridal of Pennacook. 
 
 " Lead us away in shadow and sunshine, 
 Slaves of fancy, through all thy miles, 
 The winding ways of Pemigewasset, 
 And Winnipesaukee's hundred isles." 
 
 Revisited. 
 
WHITTIER 751 
 
 " Still let them come, from Quito's walls 
 And from the Orinoco's tide, 
 From Lima's Inca-haunted halls, 
 From Santa Fe and Yucatan, 
 Men who by swart Guerrero's side 
 Proclaimed the deathless rights of man, 
 Broke every bond and fetter off, 
 And hailed in every sable serf 
 A free and brother Mexican ! " 
 The World's Convention of Friends of Emancipation. 
 
 10. Biblical Imagery. The most superficial observer 
 cannot fail to be impressed with Whittier's remarkable 
 acquaintance with Holy Writ. It colors all his pages, and 
 supplies him with a large proportion of his imagery. 
 
 11 The injunction to beware of the man of one book applies 
 to the poet whose Bible was interpreted for him by a Quaker 
 mother. Its letter is rarely absent from his verse, and its spirit 
 never. His hymns, than which he composes nothing more 
 spontaneously, are so many acts of faith." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Whittier has drawn great refreshment and inspiration 
 from the thrice-winnowed wheat and the living wells of Old- 
 Testament literature." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " His strong imagination fed upon it [the Bible]. And 
 as its very phraseology is blended with his familiar and his 
 poetic speech, so, more than this, his whole nature drew upon 
 the fountains of its waters. It is interesting to observe how, 
 throughout his poetry, allusions to Biblical characters and 
 passages fall as naturally from his lips as Greek or Roman 
 allusions from Milton's." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Give and receive ; go forth and bless 
 
 The world that needs the hand and heart 
 Of Martha's helpful carefulness 
 No less than Mary's better part." 
 
 At School-close. 
 
752 WHITTIER 
 
 c< Another sound my spirit hears, 
 
 A deeper sound, that drowns them all, 
 A voice of pleading choked with tears, 
 The call of human hopes and fears, 
 The Macedonian cry to Paul ! " 
 
 The Summons. 
 
 " And Samson's riddle is our own to-day, 
 
 Of sweetness from the strong, 
 Of union, peace, and freedom plucked away 
 From the rent jaws of wrong." 
 
 J^he Hive at Gettysburg. 
 
 ii. Simplicity Sincerity Artlessness. "His 
 artless art, as it has been well called, was but developed in 
 his later years. . . . What he said was best said in the 
 simple, natural way in which he chose to say it." Elizabeth 
 Stuart Phelps. 
 
 ''As Longfellow's finely modulated instrument will carry 
 some of his light conceptions farther down the years than 
 they would be likely to win through their own force ; so we 
 may reasonably have confidence that the entire naturalness of 
 Whittier's art, despite its narrow technical range he never 
 wrote a sonnet, for example will continue long to please 
 the lovers of poetry. " G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 "The wasteful irregularity and hurried excess which have 
 diminished or destroyed the value of so much of Whittier's 
 writings and so much of American literature here [in 
 " Snow-Bound "] gives place to the simplicity of artless art, 
 lightly touched and slightly transfigured by gleams of that 
 ideal excellence toward which life and its reflecting litera- 
 ture aspire." C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " One and all of them [the narrative poems] we may cer- 
 tainly call simple, earnest, artless, and beautifully true to the 
 native traditions and temper of New England." Barrett 
 Wendell. 
 
 " He is always simple, always free from that turgidness 
 
WHITTIER 753 
 
 and mixture of metaphors which often mar the writings of 
 Lowell." T. W. Higginson. 
 
 "At every step of the analysis it is not with art but with 
 matter, not with the literature of taste but with that of life, 
 not with a poet's skill but with a man's soul, that we find 
 ourselves dealing; in a word, it is with character almost 
 solely ; and it is this which has made him the poet of his 
 people, as the highest art might have failed to do, because he 
 has put his New England birth and breeding the common 
 inheritance of her freedom-loving, human, and religious 
 people which he shared into plain living, yet on such a level 
 of distinction that his virtues have honored the land." G. 
 E. Woodberry. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " We saw the slow tides go and come, 
 
 The curving surf-lines lightly drawn, 
 The gray rocks touched with tender bloom 
 Beneath the fresh-blown rose of dawn. 
 
 " We saw in richer sunsets lost 
 
 The sombre pomp of showery noons ; 
 And signalled spectral sails that crossed 
 The weird, low light of rising moons. 
 
 " On stormy eves from cliff and head 
 
 We saw the white spray tossed and spurned ; 
 While over all, in gold and red, 
 
 Its face of fire the lighthouse turned." 
 
 A Sea Dream. 
 
 " The pines were dark on Ramoth hill, 
 Their song was soft and low ; 
 The blossoms in the sweet May wind 
 Were falling like the snow. 
 
 " The blossoms drifted at our feet, 
 The orchard birds sang clear ; 
 The sweetest and the saddest day 
 It seemed of all the year. 
 
754 WHITT1ER 
 
 " For, more to me than birds and flowers, 
 My playmate, left her home, 
 And took with her the laughing spring, 
 The music and the bloom. 
 
 " She kissed the lips of kith and kin, 
 She laid her hand in mine : 
 What more could ask the bashful boy 
 Who fed her father's kine ? 
 
 " She left us in the bloom of May ; 
 The constant years told o'er 
 Their seasons with as sweet May morns, 
 But she came back no more. 
 
 " I walked, with noiseless feet, the round 
 Of uneventful years ; 
 Still o'er and o'er I sow the spring 
 And reap the autumn ears." My Playmate. 
 
 " No bird-song floated down the hill, 
 The tangled bank below was still ; 
 
 " No rustle from the birchen stem, 
 No ripple from the water's hem. 
 
 " The dusk of twilight round us grew, 
 We felt the falling of the dew ; 
 
 " For, from us, ere the day was done, 
 The wooded hills shut out the sun. 
 
 " But on the river's farther side 
 We saw the hill-tops glorified, 
 
 " A tender glow, exceeding fair, 
 A dream of day without its glare. 
 
 ** With us the damp, the chill, the gloom ; 
 With them the sunset's rosy bloom ; 
 
 " While dark, through willowy vistas seen, 
 The river rolled in shade between." 
 
 The River Path. 
 
TENNYSON, 1809-1892 
 
 Biographical Outline. Alfred Tennyson, born at Som- 
 ersby, North Lincolnshire, August 6, 1809 ; father rector of 
 Somersby ; Tennyson is the fourth of twelve children, and 
 two of his seven brothers also become poets of some distinc- 
 tion ; his father was the son of an English gentleman, who 
 had disinherited him in favor of a younger brother ; Tenny- 
 son is taught at home till his seventh year, when he is sent to 
 Lowth to live with his grandmother and to attend the gram- 
 mar school of that town ; he passes four years unpleasantly at 
 this school, under a strict and passionate master; in 1820 he 
 returns to Somersby, and remains there under his father's tui- 
 tion till he enters college ; he becomes an omnivorous reader, 
 especially of poetry, in his father's good library, and is in- 
 spired by the charm of his rural surroundings at Somersby, 
 which were celebrated later in his "Ode to Memory; " in 
 his thirteenth year, in a letter to his mother, he writes a crit- 
 ical review of Milton's "Samson Agonistes," illustrating his 
 points by references to Homer, Dante, and other poets ; he 
 began to write verse at the age of eight, first praising the 
 flowers in Thomsonian blank verse and then, having fallen 
 under the spell of Pope's " Homer," writing " hundreds and 
 hundreds of lines in the regular Popeian metre ; " before his 
 thirteenth year he wrote an " epic " of six thousand lines, and 
 his father predicted, " if Alfred should die, one of our great- 
 est poets will have gone;" in 1827 Tennyson collaborates 
 with his brother Charles in publishing, through a bookseller 
 of Lowth, a volume entitled " Poems by Two Brothers," for 
 which they receive ^20, one-half being taken in books ; Ten- 
 nyson's part in this volume consists mainly of imitations of 
 
 755 
 
756 TENNYSON 
 
 Byron, Moore, and other favorites, and is inferior to his 
 earlier poems, which he rejected from the published volume as 
 being " too much out of the common for the public taste;" 
 these rejected poems, of which specimens were afterward col- 
 lected by his son, show an astonishing command of metre and 
 music. 
 
 In February, 1828, with his brother Charles, Tennyson 
 matriculates at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he soon 
 becomes intimate with such stimulating companions as J. R. 
 Spedding, Monckton Milnes(Lord Houghton), J. M. Kemble, 
 Merivale, R. C. Trench, Charles Buller, and Arthur Hallam, 
 the youngest son of the historian and the dearest friend of 
 Tennyson ; in " In Memoriam," of which Hallam is the sub- 
 ject, the poet calls him " as near perfect as mortal man can 
 be ; " Tennyson does excellent work as a student at Cam- 
 bridge, devoting himself especially to the classics as well as to 
 history and the natural sciences ; he also takes a keen interest 
 in the political questions of the day, and works constantly at 
 metrical composition ; in June, 1829, at the instigation of 
 his father, he competes for and wins the chancellor's medal, 
 with verses entitled " Timbuctoo ; " this was really an old 
 poem of Tennyson's, written in blank verse on " The Battle 
 of Armageddon ' ' and adapted to the new theme ; Alfred 
 Ainger calls it " as Tennysonian as anything the author ever 
 produced;" Tennyson's competitors in this contest were 
 Milnes and Hallam ; in 1830 he publishes a volume of one hun- 
 dred and fifty pages, entitled " Poems, Chiefly Lyrical," and 
 containing, besides other poems afterward discarded, " Clari- 
 bel," " An Ode to Memory," "Mariana in the Moated 
 Grange," "The Dying Swan," etc.; although not at first 
 appreciated by the public, Tennyson's work in this volume is 
 praised by Leigh Hunt and by John Bowring, who commends 
 it in the Westminster Review ; in the summer of 1830, with 
 his friend Hallam, Tennyson makes an expedition to the 
 Pyrenees, where he receives much poetic stimulation from the 
 
TENNYSON 757 
 
 beautiful scenery and where he writes parts of " CEnone " in 
 the valley of Carterets in February, 1831. 
 
 After two and one-half years at Cambridge he is compelled 
 by the ill health of his father to leave the university ; in 1830 
 he expresses disapproval of the educational methods prevailing 
 at Cambridge, in a sonnet, complaining that " they taught 
 him nothing, feeding not the heart; " his father dies within 
 a month after Tennyson leaves Cambridge, and Arthur Hal- 
 lam becomes a very frequent and intimate visitor of the poet 
 and his mother at the Somersby rectory ; in 1831 Hallam be- 
 comes engaged to Tennyson's sister Mary ; their ideal court- 
 ship is immortalized later by the poet in " In Memoriam ; " 
 as the new rector of Somersby did not care to occupy the 
 manse, the Tennysons remained there till 1837 ; during these 
 years Tennyson frequently visits Hallam's family in Wimpole 
 Street, London, and there ardently discusses literary and so- 
 cial questions, while his manuscript poems are handed about 
 freely among his intimate friends for criticism before publica- 
 tion ; in the summer of 1832 Tennyson and Hallam make a 
 tour of the Rhine district, and in December of that year the 
 poet publishes " Poems by Alfred Tennyson," a volume in- 
 cluding " The Lady of Shalott," "The Miller's Daughter," 
 " The Palace of Art," " The Lotos Eaters," and " A Dream 
 of Fair Women ; ' ' three hundred volumes of the new poems 
 are promptly sold, but they are condemned in a silly and bru- 
 tal criticism in the Quarterly Review, with the result that 
 Tennyson publishes no more verse for ten years. 
 
 On September 15, 1833, Arthur Hallam dies suddenly at 
 Vienna, while travelling with his father ; his body is brought 
 to England, and is interred at Clevedon, Somerset, in a church 
 overlooking the Bristol Channel ; Tennyson and his family are 
 overwhelmed by the loss, and he writes at this time fragments 
 of " In Memoriam," though this poem was not completed 
 and published till ten years afterward ; about this time he 
 writes also " Two Voices," and "Thoughts on Suicide;" 
 
758 TENNYSON 
 
 he afterward declared that the loss of Hallam blotted out all 
 joy from his life and made him long for death; during the 
 next few years he remains at Somersby, " reading widely all 
 literatures, polishing old poems, making new ones, correspond- 
 ing with Spedding, Kemble, Milnes, and others, and acting 
 as father and adviser to the family at home; " at the mar- 
 riage of his brother Charles, in 1836, Tennyson takes into the 
 church as a bridesmaid the elder sister of his brother's bride, 
 Miss Emily, daughter of Henry Sellwood, a solicitor at Horn- 
 castle, and eventually they become engaged ; with his mother 
 and the rest of the family he removes, in 1837, from Somersby 
 to High Beech in Epping Forest, where they remain till 
 1840 ; they go thence to Tun bridge Wells for a year and, in 
 1841, settle at Boxley near Maidstone ; meantime Tennyson 
 continues to write poetry and completes, as early as 1835, the 
 " Moited' Arthur," "The Day Dream," and "The Gar- 
 dener's Daughter ; " in 1837 he contributes to " a volume of 
 the < keepsake' order" his poem "The Tribute;" during 
 this year he also meets Gladstone, who becomes thenceforward 
 his warm admirer and friend ; meantime Miss Sellwood's fam- 
 ily attempt to break off her engagement with Tennyson by 
 forbidding all association and correspondence between them ; 
 in 1842 he publishes his " Poems " in two volumes, and this 
 establishes his rank as then the greatest living poet ; besides 
 the chief poems from the volumes of 1830 and 1833 and the 
 others just mentioned, these volumes contained " Locksley 
 Hall," "Godiva," " The Two Voices," "Ulysses," "A 
 Vision of Sin," "Break, Break, Break," and other lyrics; 
 meantime what little capital the poet's family have is hope- 
 lessly lost by an unfortunate investment in a scheme for me- 
 chanical wood-carving, and they pass through "a season of 
 real hardship," during which Tennyson suffers so seriously 
 from hypochondria that his friends despair of his life ; his 
 critical condition causes friends to appeal in his behalf to the 
 prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, and in September, 1845, a 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 pension of ^200 a year is granted to* the poet from the civil 
 list ; the specific appeal is said to have been made by Monck- 
 ton Milnes, who won Peel by reading to him "Ulysses," 
 although the prime minister had known nothing of Tennyson 
 before. 
 
 By 1846 the "Poems" reach a fourth edition; during 
 this year Tennyson is boldly assailed by Bulwer Lytton in his 
 "New Timon," and is called "Schoolmiss Alfred," while 
 his claims to the pension are challenged ; Tennyson replies 
 vigorously in lines entitled " The New Timon and the Poets," 
 which appear in Punch over the pseudonym " Alcibiades," 
 having been sent to that journal by John Forster without 
 Tennyson's knowledge; a week later Tennyson publicly ex- 
 presses his regret and recantation of the whole matter in lines 
 entitled "An Afterthought," still published in his collected 
 poems under the head of " Literary Squabbles; " in 1847 he 
 publishes " The Princess," without the six incidental lyrics, 
 which were added in the third edition, in 1850 ; " The Prin- 
 cess " reaches five editions in six years, but does not add 
 greatly to Tennyson's popularity ; in June, 1850, he publishes 
 anonymously " In Memoriam," on which he had worked at 
 intervals during the previous seventeen years ; its authorship 
 is at once recognized ; the public welcomes it with enthusiasm, 
 but the critics are less warm in their praise; the poem is bit- 
 terly attacked by party theologians and by some reviewers ; 
 in April, 1850, on the death of Wordsworth, the laureateship 
 was offered to Rogers, who declined it on the ground of age ; 
 then, chiefly because of Prince Albert's admiration of "In 
 Memoriam," the honor is offered to Tennyson and is ac- 
 cepted ; the sales of " In Memoriam " insure to Tennyson an 
 income that warrants matrimony, and he is married to Miss 
 Sellwood June 13, 1850, at Shiplake-on-the-Thames, where 
 the lovers first met after a separation of ten years ; in after 
 days Tennyson used to say, < ' The peace of God came into 
 my life when I wedded her." 
 
760 TENNYSON 
 
 After his marriage "Tennyson settles at Chapel House, 
 Montpelier Row, Twickenham ; in 1851 he writes his sonnet 
 to Macready on the occasion of the actor's retirement from 
 the stage; in July of the same year, with his wife, he visits 
 the baths of Lucca, Florence, and the Italian Lakes, return- 
 ing by way of the Splugen a tour that he afterward cele- 
 brated in "The Daisy;" later in 1851 he writes several 
 patriotic poems, including " Britains, Hold Your Own " and 
 " All Hands Round," which are published in The Examiner ; 
 in August, 1852, his second child, a son, is born (the first 
 child died at birth) and is named Hallam, Henry Hallam 
 and Frederick Denison Maurice standing godfathers ; on the 
 death of Wellington, in November, 1852, Tennyson writes his 
 great " Ode to Wellington," which appears on the morning of 
 the funeral, and excites "all but universal depreciation; " in 
 1853, while visiting in the Isle of Wight, the poet learns of a 
 house called Farringford for rent at Freshwater, and, after in- 
 specting it with his wife, he hires it with the privilege of a 
 purchase later on ; about two years later he buys it with the 
 income irom his poem " Maud," and it becomes his home 
 during the greater part of every year until his death ; one ob- 
 ject in settling at Freshwater was to escape the intrusions on 
 his working hours incident to a residence near London ; in 
 March, 1854, another son (Lionel) is born, and Tennyson 
 arranges for an edition of his poems to be illustrated by Mil- 
 lais, Holman Hunt, and Rossetti ; during this year he visits 
 Glastonbury and other places connected with the Arthurian 
 legend, preparatory to writing his " Idylls of the King," and 
 also works on (t Maud ; " in December, 1855, he reads of the 
 disastrous charge at Balaclava, and writes at one sitting his 
 "Charge of the Light Brigade," which is printed in The 
 Examiner of December pth ; in June, 1855, the University of 
 Oxford confers on him the degree of D.C.L., and in the 
 following autumn he publishes "Maud" in a volume con- 
 taining also "The Daisy," "Ode on the Duke of Well- 
 
TENNYSON 761 
 
 ington," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," "Break, 
 Break, Break," etc. ; "Maud" is at first received with vio- 
 lent antagonism and even derision ; not discouraged, Tenny- 
 son continues to work at the Arthurian poems, and completes 
 " Enid " during the autumn of 1856 ; during 1858 he com- 
 pletes " Guinevere," and begins his dramatic lyrics in mono- 
 logues entitled, respectively, " The Grandmother " (published 
 in Once a Week in July, 1859, with an illustration by Mil- 
 lais) and " Sea Dreams " (published in Macmillarf s Magazine 
 in 1860) ; in the autumn of 1859 he publishes "The Idylls 
 of the King," which are at once received with great popu- 
 lar favor ; among other noted men who praise the poems are 
 Jowett, Macaulay, Dickens, and Ruskin ; from this time till 
 his death Tennyson's popularity remains unabated ; in 1860 
 he visits Cornwall, Devonshire, and the Scilly Islands, and in 
 1861 Auvergne and the Pyrenees, where he writes " All along 
 the Valley," in memory of his visit thirty years before with 
 Arthur Hallam ; in 1861 he prepares a new edition of "The 
 Idylls of the King," and adds the dedication to the prince 
 consort, then lately deceased ; during 1862 he works on 
 "Enoch Arden," has his first introduction to the Queen, and 
 makes a tour through Derbyshire and Yorkshire in company 
 with F. T. Palgrave; during 1863 he completes " Aylmer's 
 Field," and writes his "Welcome to Alexandra," on the 
 occasion of the marriage of the Prince of Wales; in 1864 
 he publishes the volume called "Enoch Arden," of which 
 60,000 copies were sold at once ; this volume contained, 
 besides "Enoch Arden," " Aylmer's Field," " Tithonus " 
 (reprinted from the Cornhill Magazine), " The Grandmother," 
 "Sea Dreams," and " The Northern Farmer: Old Style;" 
 with the exception of " In Memoriam " this became the most 
 popular volume of Tennyson's works, and it has been trans- 
 lated into Danish, German, Latin, Dutch, French, Hungarian, 
 and Bohemian. , 
 
 Tennyson's next volume, "The Holy Grail," appeared in 
 
72 TENNYSON 
 
 1869, and contained also "The Passing of Arthur," "Pel- 
 leas and Etarre," "The Victim," "Wages," " The Higher 
 Pantheism," and "The Northern Farmer: New Style;" 
 during this year he is made an honorary fellow of Trinity Col- 
 lege, Cambridge ; during 1868 he builds his new home, Aid- 
 worth, near Haslemere, where he afterward resides during a 
 part of every year; in 1872 he adds " Gareth and Lynette " 
 to the Arthurian cycle ; in 1873 he declines a baronetcy 
 offered by Gladstone, and in 1874 refuses the same honor 
 when offered by Disraeli ; in 1875 he publishes his first blank- 
 verse drama, "Queen Mary;" although not popular in its 
 tone, this drama was adapted to the stage by Henry Irving, 
 and was successfully presented in April, 1876 ; during 1876 
 Tennyson publishes his other drama, " Harold ; " in 1879 he 
 reprints " The Lover's Tale," based on a story of Boccaccio, 
 and written when he was under twenty years of age, printed 
 in 1833, and then distributed only among a few personal 
 friends ; it was republished only because it was being exten- 
 sively pirated; in December, 1879, the Kendals produce 
 Tennyson's little blank-verse drama "The Falcon," also 
 based on one of Boccaccio's stories, and it has a run of sixty- 
 seven nights; this drama was first published in 1884, in the 
 same volume with "The Cup;" in March, 1880, Ten- 
 nyson accepts an invitation to stand for an election to the 
 lord chancellorship of Glasgow University, but promptly 
 withdraws his name on learning that it is to be a political 
 contest and that he is expected to represent the Conservative 
 Party ; during this year, under the advice of his physician, 
 he seeks better health by a tour, with his son, to Venice, 
 Bavaria, and the Tyrol, and publishes the volume called " Bal- 
 lads and Poems;" this volume included "The Revenge," 
 "Rizpah," " The Children's Hospital," "The First Quar- 
 rel," "The Defence of Lucknow," and "The Northern 
 Cobbler;" during 1871 Tennyson's drama "The Cup" is 
 successfully presented, and he sits for his portrait to Millais; 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 in November, 1882, another drama, "The Promise of May," 
 is produced with but little success; in January, 1884, after 
 much hesitation, he accepts a peerage offered by the Queen 
 on the recommendation of Gladstone ; during this year he 
 publishes "The Cup," "The Falcon," and his tragedy of 
 " Becket ; " in 1885 appears " Tiresias and Other Poems," 
 including a prologue to Tennyson's friend, Edward FitzGerald 
 (then lately deceased), besides " The Ancient Sage" and the 
 Irish dialect poem "To-morrow;" he is deeply affected 
 by the death of his second son, Lionel, who died in April, 
 1886, while on the return voyage from a visit to Lord Duf- 
 ferin in India; in December, 1886, Tennyson publishes a 
 volume containing "The Praise of May" and "Locksley 
 Hall Sixty Years After; " during 1887 he cruises in a friend's 
 yacht, visits Devonshire and Cornwall, prepares another vol- 
 ume of poems for publication, and writes "Vastness" (pub- 
 lished in Macmillari 's Magazine) and " Owd Roa ; " during 
 1888 he is dangerously ill with rheumatic gout ; in the spring 
 of 1889 he makes a voyage in the yacht of his friend Lord 
 Brassey, and in the following December publishes " Demeter 
 and Other Poems," including "Merlin and the Gleam," an 
 autobiographical allegory, and "Crossing the Bar," which 
 was written one day while crossing the Solent on his annual 
 journey from Aldworth to Farringford ; he is in feeble health 
 during 1890, but in 1891 he completes for Daly, the Ameri- 
 can manager, the drama "Robin Hood," which was pro- 
 duced in New York under the title " The Foresters ; " during 
 1892 Tennyson writes his " Lines on the Death of the Duke 
 of Clarence," cruises to Jersey, and visits London ; during 
 this, his last year, he also looks over the proofs of an intended 
 volume of poems, " The Death of QEnone," and takes a deep 
 interest in the forthcoming production of " Becket " by Irv- 
 ing; he dies at Aldworth, October 6, 1892, and is buried in 
 the "Poets' Corner" at Westminster Abbey, many of the 
 most famous men of England acting as his pall-bearers. 
 
764 TENNYSON 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON TENNYSON. 
 
 Brooke, S. A., "Tennyson, his Art," etc. New York, 1894, Putnam. 
 Stedman, E. C, "Victorian Poets." Boston, 1876, Osgood, 150-223. 
 Van Dyke, H., "The Poetry of Tennyson." New York, 1889, Scrib- 
 
 ner, v. index. 
 Taine, H., " History of English Literature." New York, 1875, Holt, 
 
 3: 391-418. 
 Kingsley, C., " Literary and General Lectures." New York, 1890, 
 
 Macmillan, 103-127. 
 Henley, W. E., "Views and Reviews." New York, 1890, Scribner, 
 
 154-158. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, i: 
 
 333-346. 
 
 Taylor, B., " Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 1-37. 
 Hutton, R. H., "Essays, Theological and Literary." London, 1877, 
 
 Daldy & Co., 2 : 303-369. 
 Rearden, T. H., " Petrarch and other Essays." San Francisco, 1893, 
 
 Murdoch, 43-104. 
 
 Cooke, G. W., " Poets and Problems." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 57-87. 
 Spedding, J., " Reviews and Discussions. " London, 1879, Kegan Paul 
 
 &Co., 277-299. 
 
 Bagehot, W., "Literary Studies." Hartford, 1891, Travellers' Insur- 
 ance Co., 2 : 338-39 - 
 Home, R. H., "A New Spirit of the Age." New York, 1844, Harper, 
 
 193-211. 
 Masson, D., " In the Footsteps of the Poets." New York, 1893, Ishester, 
 
 333-38L 
 Robertson, J. M., " Essays toward a Critical Method." London, 1889, 
 
 Unwin, 233-283. 
 Stirling, J. H., " Jerrold, Tennyson, and Macaulay." Edinburgh, 
 
 1868, Edmonton & Douglass, 51-112. 
 Fields, J. T., " Yesterdays with Authors." Boston, 1875, Osgood, v. 
 
 index. 
 Bayne, P., "Lessons from My Masters." New York, 1879, Harper, 
 
 203-364. 
 Bayne, P., "Essays in Biography and Criticism." Boston, 1857, Gould 
 
 & Lincoln, 50-146. 
 Hallam, A. H., "The Lyrical Poems of Tennyson." London, 1893, 
 
 Macmillan, 87-138. 
 
'ENNYSON 765 
 
 Saintsbury, G., " Corrected Impressions." New York, 1895, Dodd, 
 
 Mead & Co., 21-41. 
 
 Devey, J., " Modern English Poets." London, 1873, Moxon, 275-337. 
 Tuckerman, H. T., "Thoughts on the Poets." New York, 1846, 
 
 Francis, 273-281. 
 Oliphant, Mrs., "The Victorian Age." New York, 1892, Tait, 
 
 203-215. 
 Innes, A. O., "Seers and Singers." London, 1893, Constable, v. 
 
 index. 
 Wilde, Lady T. H. S., "Notes on Men," etc. London, 1891, Ward 
 
 & Downey, 286-326. 
 Walters, J. C., "In Tennyson Land." London, 1890, Redway, v. 
 
 index. 
 Luce, M., "New Studies in Tennyson." London, 1893, J. Baker & 
 
 Son, v. index. 
 Wilson, J., "Essays." Edinburgh, 1856, Blackwood (Works), 6: 
 
 109-153- 
 Brimley, G., "Cambridge Essays." London, 1855, Parker & Son, 
 
 i: 226-281. 
 
 Waugh, A., "Alfred Tennyson." London, 1893, Heinemann, v. index. 
 Tainsh, E. C. , " A Study of the Works of Tennyson." London, 1893, 
 
 Macmillan, v. index. 
 Jacobs, J., "Alfred Tennyson, an Appreciation." London, 1892, D. 
 
 Mitt, v. index. 
 Dawson, W. J., "The Makers of Modern English." New York, 1890, 
 
 Whittaker, 169-270. 
 Walters,}. M., "Tennyson, Poet, Philosopher," etc. London, 1893, 
 
 Kegan Paul & Co., v. index. 
 Gilfillan, G., " Literary Portraits." Edinburgh, 1852, J. Hogg, 2 : 
 
 148-160. 
 Dowden, E., "Studies in Literature." London, 1878, Kegan Paul & 
 
 Co., v. index. 
 Sterling, J., " A Review of Tennyson's Poems." London, 1848, Parker 
 
 & Son, 412-463. 
 Cheney, J. V., "The Golden Guess." Boston, 1892, Lee & Shepard, 
 
 161-201. 
 Howitt, W., "Homes and Haunts of British Poets." London, 1863, 
 
 Routledge, 691-703. 
 
 Contemporary Review, 62 : 761-785 (S. A. Brooke). 
 Critic, 21 : 202-211 (H. Van Dyke and others); 21 : 285-290 (W. J. 
 
 Rolfe and others) ; 10: i (Whitman) ; 6 : 50 (W. J. Rolfe). 
 Nation, 21 : 60, 61 (C. E. Norton). 
 
766 TENNYSON 
 
 New Review, 7 : 513-532 (E. Gosse). 
 
 Review of Reviews, 6: 557-570 (W. T. Stead); 6: 553-556 (H. W. 
 
 Mabie). 
 
 Harper's Monthly, 86: 309-312 (A. Fields) ; 68 : 20-41 (A. T. Ritchie). 
 Our Day, II : 19-36 (W. T. Stead). 
 
 Dial (Chicago), 14: 168, 169 (J. Burroughs) ; 14 : 101, 102 (E. E. Hale). 
 Christian Union, 46: 786-970 (H. W. Mabie). 
 Nineteenth Century, 35: 761-774 (H. D. Traill) ; 23: 127-129 (A. C. 
 
 Swinburne). 
 
 Poet-Lore, 7 : 428-435 {W. J. Rolfe). 
 National Magazine, 20: 454, and 14: 694 (A. Austin). 
 Century, 24: 32-37 (J. A. Symonds) ; 23: 539-544, and 20: 502-510 
 
 (H. Van Dyke) ; 15 : 105 (E. Gosse). 
 Arena, 9 : 582-592 (W. H. Savage). 
 
 American Catholic Quarterly, 18 : 101-121 (G. P. Lathrop). 
 Scribner's Magazine, 6 : 242-248 (H. Van Dyke) ; 8 : 100-105 (E. C. 
 
 Stedman). 
 
 New Princeton Review, 4 : 56-60 (H. Van Dyke). 
 Poet-Lore, 3: 10-17 (A. S. Cook). 
 Presbyterian Review, 4 : 681-709 (H. Van Dyke). 
 Quarterly Review, 106 : 454-485 (W. E. Gladstone). 
 Fraser's Magazine, 42 : 245-255 (C. Kingsley). 
 Macmillan's Magazine, 27: 143-167 (R. H. Hutton) ; 3: 258-262 
 
 (S. Colvin). 
 
 Appleton's Magazine, 7 : 353-356 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 International Review, 4: 397-418 (B. Taylor). 
 Fortnightly Review, 35: 129-153 (A. C." Swinburne). 
 Atlantic Monthly, 28: 513-526 (E. C. Stedman). 
 Christian Examiner, 33: 237-244 (C. C. Felton). 
 Westminster Review, 30 : 402-424 (J. S. Mill). 
 Galaxy, 20 : 393-402 (H. James, jr.). 
 North American Review, 123 : 216-221 (R. H. Stoddard). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I. Ideal Portraiture. " With few exceptions, Tenny- 
 son's most poetical types of men and women are not sub- 
 stantial beings but beautiful shadows, which, like the phan- 
 toms of a stereopticon, dissolve if you examine them too long 
 and closely." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "What first attracted people were Tennyson's portraits of 
 
 
TENNYSON 767. 
 
 women. . . . Each word of them is like a tint, curiously 
 shaded and deepened by the neighboring tint, with all the 
 boldness and results of the happiest refinement." Tame. 
 
 ' 'In one respect I think 'In Memoriam ' surpasses all his 
 other works. I mean in the exquisite tone of the pictures it 
 contains." . H. Hutton. 
 
 " Mr. Tennyson sketches females as never did Sir Thomas 
 Lawrence. His portraits are delicate, his likenesses perfect, 
 and they have life, character, and individuality." Professor 
 Wilson [Christopher North]. 
 
 " His color and outline in conveying the visual image are 
 based on a study of natural fact and a practice in transferring 
 it to words which are equally beyond comparison. 
 Let any one of a thousand of his descriptions body itself 
 before the eye, and the picture will be like the things seen in 
 a dream, but firmer and clearer." George Saintsbury. 
 
 " Observe how the poet gazes face to face upon what he 
 portrays, how distinctly he hears every word falling from the 
 lips of his characters. He never slurs, he never generalizes. 
 . . . He sees the apple-blossom as it sails on the rill ; 
 the garden walk is bordered with lilac. He lets you hear the 
 words of the simple, kindly rustics, and you see the flowers 
 plucked for the wreath, to bind the brow of the little child. 
 . . . It [the portrait of Lilian] reminded me of nothing 
 I had ever read in poetry or in prose. JsTo strong feeling was 
 produced, but I experienced a distinct sensation of pleasant- 
 ness, like that of seeing a delicately tinted, quaintly shaped 
 china cup ; or finding a curiously-veined, richly-flushed shell 
 on the seashore." Peter Bayne. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " At length I saw a lady within call, 
 
 Stiller than chisel'd marble, standing there ; 
 A daughter of the gods, divinely tall 
 And most divinely fair, 
 
768 TENNYSON 
 
 Her loveliness with shame and with surprise 
 Froze my swift speech : she, turning on my face 
 
 The star-like sorrows of immortal eyes, 
 Spoke slowly in her place." 
 
 A Dream of Fair Women. 
 
 " O sweet pale Margaret, 
 O rare pale Margaret, 
 What lit your eyes with tearful power, 
 Like moonlight on a falling shower ? 
 Who lent you, love, your mortal dower 
 Of pensive thought and aspect pale, 
 Your melancholy sweet and frail 
 As perfume of the cuckoo-flower ? 
 From the westward-winding flood, 
 From the evening-lighted wood, 
 From all things outward you have won 
 A tearful grace, as tho' you stood 
 Between the rainbow and the sun. 
 The very smile before you speak, 
 That dimples your transparent cheek, 
 Encircles all the heart, and feedeth 
 The senses with a still delight 
 Of dainty sorrow without sound, 
 Like the tender amber round, 
 Which the moon around her spreadeth, 
 Moving thro' a fleecy night." Margaret* 
 
 " Mystery of mysteries, 
 Faintly smiling Adeline, 
 Scarce of earth nor all divine, 
 Nor unhappy, nor at rest, 
 But beyond expression fair 
 With thy floating flaxen hair ; 
 Thy rose lips and full blue eyes 
 Take the heart from out my breast 
 Wherefore those dim looks of thine, 
 Shadowy, dreaming Adeline ? " Adeline. 
 
 2. Picturesqueness. ''Many years ago, as I have 
 always remembered, on the appearance of the first four ' Idylls 
 
TENNYSON 769 
 
 of the King,' one of the greatest painters living pointed out to 
 me, with a deep word of rapturous admiration, the wonderful 
 breadth of beauty and the perfect force of truth in a single 
 verse of Elaine, 
 
 ' And white sails flying on the yellow sea.' 
 
 And I know once more the truth of what I had 
 never doubted that the eye and the hand of Mr. Tennyson 
 may always be trusted, at once and alike, to see and express 
 the truth. Again, 
 
 ' Its stormy crests that smote against the skies.' 
 
 Only Victor Hugo himself can make words lighten and thun- 
 der like these." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " In the description of pastoral nature in England no one 
 has ever surpassed Tennyson. The union of fidelity to nature 
 and extreme beauty is scarcely to be found in an equal degree 
 in any other writer. ... In Tennyson there is no ten- 
 dency to inventiveness in his descriptions of scenery ; he con- 
 tents himself with the loveliness of the truth seen through the 
 medium of such emotion as belongs to the subject in hand." 
 R. H. Home. 
 
 " An idyllic or picturesque mode of conveying [his] senti- 
 ment is the one natural to this poet, if not the only one per- 
 mitted by his limitations. In this he surpasses all the poets 
 since Theocritus. . . . He is a born observer of physi- 
 cal nature, and, whenever he applies an adjective to some 
 object or passingly alludes to some phenomenon, which others 
 have but noted, is almost infallibly correct. He has the 
 unerring first touch which in a single line proves the artist ; 
 and it justly has been remarked that there is more true Eng- 
 lish landscape in many an isolated stanza of ' In Memoriam ' 
 than in the whole of The Seasons,' that vaunted descriptive 
 poem of a former century. " E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The poetry of Tennyson is replete with magnificent pict- 
 ures, flushed with the finest hues of language, and speaking 
 49 
 
770 TENNYSON 
 
 to the eye and the mind with the vividness of reality. We 
 not only see the object but feel the associations connected 
 with it. His language is penetrated with imagination, and 
 the felicity of his epithets especially leaves nothing to desire." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Quiet scenes and soft characters he delights to portray, 
 and he portrays them with what the painters call a very soft 
 touch." C. C. Felton. 
 
 " In Mr. Tennyson alone, as we think, the spirit of the 
 middle age is perfectly reflected; its delight, not in the 
 'sublime and picturesque,' but in the green leaves and spring 
 for their own sake. . . . Give him but such scenery as 
 that which he can see in every parish in England, and he will 
 find it a fit scene for an ideal myth. . . . It is the 
 mystic, after all, who will describe Nature most simply, 
 because he sees most in her ; because he is most ready to 
 believe -that she will reveal to others the same message that 
 she has revealed to him. . . . He has become the great- 
 est naturalistic poet that England has seen for centuries." 
 Charles Kingsley. 
 
 " The power which makes Tennyson's idylls so unique in 
 their beauty is, I think, his wonderful skill in creating a per- 
 fectly real and living scene, ... a scene every feature 
 of which helps to make the emotion delineated more real and 
 vivid. ... Is there, in the whole range of English 
 poetry, such a picture of a summer twilight as this : 
 
 ' By night we lingered on the lawn,' etc. ? 
 
 I know no descriptive poetry that has the delicate spiritual 
 genius of that passage, its sweet mystery, its subdued lustre, 
 its living truth, its rapture of peace." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 II The wonderful succession of cartoons in the ' Palace ' and 
 the ' Dream ' exhibit this [combination of music and pictures] 
 in his very earliest stage, ... the power of filling eye 
 and ear at once. . . . The attraction of the poem ' In 
 
TENNYSON 771 
 
 [emoriam ' is . . . , above all, in those unmatched 
 landscapes and sketches of which the poet is very prodigal." 
 George Saintsbury. 
 
 " Every line of his poems on Nature is a picture in a new 
 style of art, something which had not 'been done before 
 in this fashion and finish ; no, not even by Wordsworth, 
 whose love of flowers and birds is less pictorial but more 
 instinct with the life of the things he describes. 
 Scattered through these poems [1842] are lovely, true, and 
 intimate descriptions of Nature in England, done with an art 
 which never forgets itself and which seems sometimes too 
 elaborate in skill. ' The Gardener's Daughter ' is alive with 
 such descriptions. Step by step we move on, the changing 
 scene is painted. We walk through the landscape with Ten- 
 nyson. ' ' Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " In the poetic reproduction of visual impressions Tenny- 
 son's superiority to all but the very greatest of English poets, 
 and his equality with those greatest, is so well established and 
 was displayed in such an overwhelming abundance of exam- 
 ples, that to quote from but a few of his pages would be to fill 
 my own. One could not pass by his image of banished 
 
 fancy : 
 
 ' sadder than a single star 
 That sets at twilight in a land of reeds,' 
 
 nor a hundred other passages ... in which the poet 
 has set before us a picture with a few strokes of his enchanted 
 brush, and of each and all of which the same question would 
 have to be asked: Where does the commanding merit of 
 the material end and the victorious power of art begin?" 
 H. D. Traill. 
 
 " There is a voluptuous glow in this coloring, warm and 
 rich as that of Titian, yet often subdued by the distinct out- 
 line and chastened tone of the Roman school; while the 
 effect of the whole is elevated by the pure expressiveness of 
 Raphael." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
772 TENNYSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Now fades the last long streak of snow, 
 Now burgeons every maze of quick 
 About the flowering squares, and thick 
 By ashen roots the violets blow. 
 
 " Now rings the woodland loud and long, 
 The distance takes a lovelier hue, 
 And, drown'd in yonder living blue, 
 The lark becomes a sightless song. 
 
 " Now dance the lights on lawn and lea, 
 The flocks are whiter down the vale, 
 And milkier every milky sail 
 On winding stream or distant sea." In Memoriam. 
 
 " Lightly he laugh'd, as one that read my thought, 
 And on we went ; but ere an hour had pass'd, 
 We reached a meadow slanting to the North ; 
 Down which a well-worn pathway courted us 
 To one green wicket in a private hedge ; 
 This, yielding, gave into a grassy walk 
 Thro' crowded lilac-ambush trimly pruned ; 
 And one warm gust, full-fed with perfume, blew 
 Beyond us as we enter'd in the cool. 
 The garden stretches southward. In the midst 
 A cedar spread his dark-green layers of shade. 
 The garden-grasses shone, and momently 
 The twinkling laurels scatter'd silver lights." 
 
 The Gardener's Daughter. 
 
 " To-night the winds begin to rise 
 
 And roar from yonder dropping day ; 
 The last red leaf is whirled away, 
 The rooks are blown about the skies ; 
 
 " The forest cracked, the waters cuiTd, 
 The cattle huddled on the lea ; 
 And wildly dashed on tower and tree 
 The sunbeam strikes along the world." 
 
 In Memoriam. 
 
TENNYSON 773 
 
 3. Exquisite Finish Smooth Melody. " In tech- 
 nical elegance, as an artist in verse, Tennyson is the greatest 
 of modern poets. Other masters, old and new, have surpassed 
 him in special instances ; but he is the only one who rarely 
 nods, and who always finishes his verse to the extreme. . . . 
 Here is the absolute sway of metre, compelling every rhyme 
 and measure needful to the thought ; here are sinuous alliter- 
 ations, unique and varying breaks and pauses, winged flights 
 and falls, the glory of sound and color everywhere present, 
 or, if missing, absent of the poet's free will. . . . The 
 blank verse of the Morte d' Arthur ' and Guinevere ' is the 
 perfection of English rhythm ; nor has Tennyson of late years 
 uttered a poem without that objective foresight which sees the 
 end from the beginning and makes the whole work round and 
 perfect. A great artist, a strong and conscientious singer 
 holding his imagination quite in his own hand. In Tennyson 
 we have the strong repose of art whereof the world is slow to 
 tire. . . . The fulness of his art evades the charm of 
 spontaneity. . . . Tennyson's original and fastidious 
 art is of itself a theme for an essay. The poet who studies it 
 may well despair, he can never excel it ; . . . its strength 
 is that of perfection ; its weakness, the over-perfection which 
 marks a still-life pa4nter. . . . Let me conclude my re- 
 marks on his art with a reference to his unfailing taste and 
 sense of the fitness of things. This is neatly exemplified in 
 the openings, and especially in the closings, of his idylls. The 
 artistic excellence of his work has been, from the first, so dis- 
 tinguished that lay critics are often at a loss how to estimate this 
 poet. Tennyson's art-instincts are always perfect; he does the 
 fitting thing, and rarely seeks through eccentric and curious 
 movements to attract popular regard. . . . E. A. Poe said 
 that ' in perfect sincerity ' he pronounced him ' the noblest 
 poet that ever lived.' If he had said the ' noblest artist,' and 
 confined this judgment to the lyrists of the English tongue, he 
 probably would have made no exaggeration." E. C. Stedman. 
 
774 TENNYSON 
 
 " The perception of harmony lies in the very essence of the 
 poet's nature, and Mr. Tennyson gives magnificent proofs that 
 he is endowed with it." Wordsworth. 
 
 " But of others [besides Shakespeare] only Spenser had 
 hitherto drawn such pictures as those of the ' Palace ' and the 
 ' Dream/ and Spenser had done them in far less terse fashion 
 than Tennyson. Only Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, Blake, per- 
 haps Beddoes, and a few Elizabethans had poured into the 
 veins of language the ineffable musical throb of a score of 
 pieces, from ' Claribel ' to ' Break ! Break ! ' and not one of 
 them had done it in quite the same way. Only Milton, with 
 Thomson as a far distant second, had impressed upon non- 
 dramatic blank verse such a swell and surge as that of ' (E- 
 none.' And about all these different kinds and others there 
 clung and rang a peculiar dreamy slow music, which was heard 
 for the first time, and which has never been reproduced a 
 music which in the ' Lotos Eaters/ impossible as it might 
 have seemed, adds a new charm after the ' Faerie Queen/ 
 after the ' Castle of Indolence/ after the ' Revolt of Islam/ to 
 the Spenserian stanza, which makes the stately verse of the 
 ' Palace ' and the ' Dream ' tremble and cry with melodious 
 emotion, and which accomplishes the miracle of the poet's 
 own dying swan in a hundred other poems all flooded over 
 with eddying song. . . . There is nothing greater about 
 it [*' In Memoriam "] than the way in which, side by side with 
 the prevailing undertone of the stanza, the individual pieces 
 vary the music and accompany it, so to speak, in duet with a 
 particular melody. It must have been already obvious to 
 good ears that no greater master of harmonies perhaps that 
 none so great had ever lived ; but ' In Memoriam ' set the 
 fact finally and irrevocably on record. ... In all other 
 respects (except faulty rhymes and occasional accumulations 
 of tribrachs) his versification is by far the most perfect of any 
 English poet, and results in a harmony positively incompara- 
 ble. . . . Take any one of a myriad of lines of Tenny- 
 
TENNYSON 775 
 
 son, and the mere arrangement of vowels and consonants will 
 be a delight to the ear. . . . The same music continued 
 to sound with infinite variety of detail, but with no breach 
 of general character from ' Claribel ' itself to ' Crossing the 
 Bar.' . . . If you want quick music you must go else- 
 where for it or be content with the poet not at his best. But 
 in the other mode of linked and long-drawn-out sweetness 
 he has hardly any single master and no superior." George 
 Saintsbury. 
 
 " Tennyson possesses a consummate science of rhythm, the 
 rarest resources of phrase, taste, grace, distinction, every sort 
 of clearness, of research, of refinement. He is the author of 
 lyric pieces unequalled in any other language, some of infinite 
 delicacy, some of engrossing pathos, some quivering like the 
 blast of a mighty horn." Edmond Scherer. 
 
 "He has performed some miracles of versification, and 
 achieved verbal melodies, especially in his ballads, that vin- 
 dicate most sweetly our so-called harsh Saxon idiom." H. 
 T. Tuckerman. 
 
 "His song can steal forth, catch by a faint but serial pre- 
 lude the ear, quick to seize on the true music of Olympus, 
 and then, with growing and ever-swelling symphonies, still 
 more ethereal, still fuller of wonder, love, and charmed woe, 
 can travel on amid the listening and spellbound multitude, 
 an invisible spirit of melodious power, expanding, soaring 
 aloft, sinking deep, coming now as from the distant sea, and 
 filling all the summer air, so that it can triumph in its own 
 celestial energy. The poet himself would rather not be 
 found. . . . The poetry of Tennyson, like that of 
 Shakespeare, seems to possess a music of its own. It is evi- 
 dently evolved amid the intense play of melodies which are 
 as much a part of the individual mind itself as the harmonies 
 of nature are a part of nature. Like Shakespeare, Tennyson 
 is especially fond of, or rather haunted by, musical refrains, 
 the airs that are not invented but struck out \ that cannot be 
 
776 TENNYSON 
 
 conceived by any labor of thought, but are inspired." 
 William Howitt. 
 
 " Taking the blank verse of the ' Idylls ' through and through, 
 as a work of art, it is more finished, more expressive, more 
 perfectly musical than that of ( Paradise Lost.' . . . He 
 has never done anything more pure and perfect than these 
 songs from ' The Princess,' clear and simple and musical as 
 the chime of silver bells, deep in their power of suggestion as 
 music itself. . . . Sweet and Low,' ' Ask me no more,' 
 and ' Blow, Bugle, Blow,' will be remembered and sung as 
 long as English hearts move to the sweet melody of love and 
 utter its secret meanings in the English tongue. 
 These lyrics [in " Maud "] are magical, unforgetable ; they 
 give an immortal beauty to the poem. ... It ["De- 
 meter"] is an example of that opulent, stately, and musical 
 blank verse in which Tennyson is the greatest master since 
 Milton died." Henry van Dyke. 
 
 "Though Tennyson, of course, does not bring to its exe- 
 cution a voice of the mighty volume of Milton's, he has not 
 only written what is far more perfect as a work of art than 
 ' Paradise Lost ' . . . but a poem which shadows forth 
 the ideal faith of his own time. Lord Tennyson was an 
 artist even before he was a poet ; . . . the eye for 
 beauty, grace, and harmony of effect was even more em- 
 phatically one of his original gifts than the voice for poetic 
 utterance itself. . . . He is one of the greatest masters 
 of meter, both simple and sonorous, that the English language 
 has ever known." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 "The art stands up in his poems self-proclaimed and not 
 as any mere modification of thought and language but the 
 operation of a separate and definite power in the human 
 faculties. . . . Whatever he writes is a complete work 
 he holds the unity of it as firmly in his hand as his CEnone's 
 Paris holds the apple and there is nothing broken or in- 
 complete in these two full volumes. His few ' fragments ' 
 
TENNYSON 777 
 
 are entire in themselves and suggest the remainders." R. H. 
 Home. 
 
 "It is to note, too, that the Laureate of to-day deals with 
 language in a way that to the Tennyson of the beginning was 
 impossible. ... In those early years he was rather Ben- 
 venuto than Michael Angelo, he was more of a jeweller than 
 a sculptor ; the phrase was too much for him, the inspiration 
 of the incorrect too little. Most interesting is it to the artist 
 to remark how impatient of rhyme and how confident irr 
 rhyme is the whilom poet of ' Oriana.' . . . Now it is the 
 art ; it is the greater Shakespeare, the consummate Rembrandt. 
 . . . He was an artist in words. . . . From the first, 
 Lord Tennyson was an exemplar, and now, in these new utter- 
 ances, his supremacy is completely revealed." W. E. Henley. 
 
 "Before him no poet dared to use sound or metre in the 
 same manner as the architect and sculptor use form, and the 
 painter form and color. It was a new delight, both to the 
 ear and to the unrecognized sense which stands between sen- 
 suousness and pure intelligence. Because, more than most 
 poets, he consciously possessed this power, he rapidly learned 
 how to use it. His ' Mariana ' is an extraordinary piece of 
 minute and equally finished detail. The fastidious care with 
 which every image is wrought, every bar of the movement 
 adjusted to the next and attuned to the music of all, every 
 epithet chosen for point, freshness, and picturesque effect, 
 every idea restrained within the limits of close and clear ex- 
 pression these virtues so intimately fused became a sudden 
 delight for all lovers of poetry, and for a time affected their 
 appreciation of its more unpretending and artless forms." 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 " I know of no blank verse which reminds me of ' GEnone ' 
 in its general structure, its musical variations of rhythm, and 
 its verbal finish; it is simply perfect." R. If. Stoddard. 
 
 "He was the greatest artist in words that Cambridge has 
 ever produced." Lowell. 
 
77$ TENNYSON 
 
 " There is no finer ear than Tennyson's, nor more com- 
 mand of the keys of language. Color, like the dawn, flows 
 over the horizon from his pencil in waves so rich that we do 
 not miss the central form." Emerson. 
 
 " On the going out of the imaginative, sentimental, and 
 Satanic school, Tennyson appeared exquisite. All forms and 
 ideas which had pleased them were found in him, but puri- 
 fied, modulated, set in a splendid style." Tame. 
 
 " His pictures of rural scenery, among the finest in the 
 language, give the inner spirit as well as the outward form of 
 the objects, and represent them, also, in their relation to the 
 mind which is gazing on them." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 "So perfect is his rhythmical instinct in general that he 
 seems to see with his ear." E. A. Poe. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Bird's love and bird's song 
 Flying here and there, 
 Bird's song and bird's love, 
 And you with gold for hair ! 
 Bird's song and bird's love, 
 Passing with the weather, 
 Men's song and men's love, 
 To love once and forever. 
 
 Men's love and bird's love, 
 
 And women's love and men's ! 
 
 And you my wren with a crown of gold, 
 
 You my queen of the wrens ! 
 
 You the queen of the wrens 
 
 We'll be birds of a feather, 
 
 I'll be the king of the queen of the wrens, 
 
 And all in a nest together." The Window. 
 
 " There lies a vale in Ida, lovelier 
 Than all the valleys of Ionian hills. 
 The swimming vapor slopes athwart the glen, 
 Puts forth an arm, and creeps from pine to pine, 
 
TENNYSON 779 
 
 And loiters, slowly drawn. On either hand 
 The lawns and meadow- ledges midway down 
 Hang rich in flowers, and far below them roars 
 The long brook falling thro' the clov'n ravine 
 In cataract after cataract to the sea. 
 Behind the valley topmost Gargarus, 
 Stands up and takes the morning : but in front 
 The gorges, opening wide apart, reveal, 
 Troas and llion's column'd citadel, 
 The crown of Troas." CEnone. 
 
 " She is coming, my own, my sweet ; 
 
 Were it ever so airy a tread, 
 My heart would hear her and beat, 
 
 Were it earth in an earthy bed ; 
 My dust would hear her and beat, 
 
 Had I lain for a century dead ; 
 Would start and tremble under her feet 
 
 And blossom in purple and red." Maud. 
 
 4. Occasional Passion Vehemence. " The tour- 
 nament scene at the close of the fifth book of ' The Princess ' 
 is the most vehement and rapid passage in the whole range of 
 Tennyson's poetry. By an approach to the Homeric swift- 
 ness, it presents a contrast to the laborious movement of much 
 of his narrative verse. ... He does not, like Browning, 
 catch the secret of a master-passion, nor, like the old drama- 
 tist, the very life of action." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " There was a fire of passion under this smooth surface. A 
 genuine poetic temperament never fails in this. It feels too 
 acutely to be at peace." Taine. 
 
 " When Tennyson attempts to rise into passionate expres- 
 sion, as when Pelleas turns and strikes his curse at Ettarre and 
 her harlot towers, he becomes only violent without power. 
 That vivid sketch at the beginning, of the wood and of the 
 bracken burning around it in the sunlight, cannot keep up its 
 speed and fire to the end. Nor is there a single piece of noble 
 or passionate writing in the whole of ' The Idylls of the King,' 
 
780 TENNYSON 
 
 save at the end, where Pelleas breaks into the hall of Arthur 
 swordless." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Never since the beginning of all poetry were the twin 
 passions of terror and pity more divinely done into deathless 
 words or set to more perfect and profound magnificence of 
 music." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " ' Fatima' is full of true and vehement and yet musical 
 passion, and suggests the strong flow of Lesbian poetry and 
 particularly the well-known fragment of Sappho addressed 
 to a woman." -John Sterling. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " O my cousin, shallow hearted ! O my Amy, mine no more 
 
 the dreary, dreary moorland ! O the barren, barren shore ! 
 
 " Falser than all fancy fathoms, falser than all songs have sung, 
 Puppet to a father's threat, and servile to a shrewish tongue ! 
 
 " What is this ? his eyes are heavy : think not they are glazed 
 
 with wine. 
 Go to him : it is thy duty : kiss him : take his hand in thine. 
 
 " It may be my lord is weary, that his brain is overwrought ; 
 Soothe him with thy finer fancies, touch him with thy lighter 
 thought. 
 
 '* He will answer to the purpose, easy things to understand 
 Better thou wert dead before me, tho' I slew thee with my 
 hand." Locksley Hall. 
 
 " Ah you, that have lived so soft, what should you know of the 
 
 night, 
 
 The blast and the burning shame and the bitter frost and the 
 fright ? 
 
 1 have done it, while you were asleep you were only made for 
 
 the day. 
 
 I have gather' d my baby together and now you may go your 
 way. 
 
 
TENNYSON 781 
 
 "Do you think I was scared by the bones? I kiss'd 'em, I 
 
 buried 'em all 
 
 I can't dig deep, I am old in the night by the churchyard wall. 
 My Willy '11 rise up whole when the trumpet of judgment '11 
 
 sound, 
 But I charge you never to say that I laid him in holy ground. 
 
 " And if he be lost but to save my soul, that is all your desire : 
 Do you think that I care for my soul if my boy be gone to the 
 
 fire? 
 I have been with God in the dark go, go, you may leave me 
 
 alone 
 
 You never have borne a child you are just as hard as stone." 
 
 Rizpah. 
 
 " Why do they prate of the blessings of Peace ? we have made 
 
 them a curse ; 
 
 Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own ; 
 And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse 
 Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearth- 
 stone ? 
 
 " And the vitriol madness flushes up in the ruffian's head, 
 Till the filthy by-lane rings to the yell of the trampled wife, 
 And chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread, 
 And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life. 
 
 " When a Mammonite mother kills her babe for a burial fee, 
 And Timour-Mammon grins on a pile of children's bones, 
 Is it peace or war ? better, war ! loud war by land and sea, 
 War with a thousand battles, and shaking a hundred thrones." 
 
 Maud. 
 
 5. Ornateness Ornamentation of the Common- 
 place. Walter Bagehot, one oftheacutest of modern critics, 
 takes Tennyson's " Enoch Arden " as a specimen of ornate art 
 as distinguished from pure art [Shelley's] and grotesque art 
 [Browning's]. Many of Tennyson's other poems illustrate 
 the same quality. 
 
 "The essence of ornate art is ... to accumulate 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 around the typical object everything which can be said about 
 it, every thought that can be associated with it, without im- 
 pairing the essence of the delineation. . . . Nothing is 
 described as it is ; everything has about it an air of some- 
 thing else. . . . That is to say, that the function of the 
 poet is to introduce a ' gay confusion,' a rich medley, which 
 does not exist in the actual world. ... As Enoch was 
 and must be coarse, in itself the poem must depend for a 
 charm on a 'gay confusion,' on a splendid accumulation of 
 impossible accessories. . . . Tennyson has painted with 
 pure art ... the ' Northern Farmer,' and we all know 
 what a splendid, what a living thing he has made of it. He 
 could, if he only would, have given us the ideal sailor in like 
 manner ; the ideal of a natural sailor, we mean the charac- 
 teristic present man as he is and lives. . . . Mr. Tenny- 
 son has made it his aim to call off the stress of fancy from real 
 life, to occupy it otherwise, to bury it with pretty acces- 
 sories. . . . The story of Enoch Arden as he has en- 
 hanced and presented it, is a rich and splendid composite of 
 imagery and illustration. Yet how simple that story is in 
 itself. A sailor who sells fish breaks his leg, gets dismal, 
 gives up selling fish, goes to sea, is wrecked on a desert island, 
 stays there some years, on his return finds his wife married to 
 a miller, speaks to a landlady on the subject, and dies. Told 
 in the pure and simple, unadorned and classical style, this 
 story would not have taken three pages. ... He has 
 given us a sailor covered all over with ornament and illustra- 
 tion, because he then wanted to describe an unreal type of 
 fancied man not sailors as they are but sailors as they might 
 be wished. . . . But nothing in this class of subjects is 
 more remarkable than the power he possesses of communicat- 
 ing to simple incidents and objects of reality preternatural 
 spirit as part of the enchantment of the scene. We are fortu- 
 nate in not having to hunt out of past literature an illustration 
 of ornate style, . . . Mr. Tennyson has just given one ad- 
 
TENNYSON 783 
 
 mirable in itself and most characteristic of the defects and merits 
 of this style. . . . That art is the appropriate art for an 
 unpleasing type. Many of the characters of real life, if they 
 were brought distinctly, prominently, and plainly before the 
 mind, as they really are, if shown in their inner nature, their 
 actual essence, are doubtless very unpleasant. They would be 
 horrid to meet and horrid to think of." Walter Bagehot. 
 
 " It may not be the highest imaginable sign of the poetic 
 power or native inspiration that a man should be able to 
 grind a beauty out of a deformity or carve a defect into a per- 
 fection ; but whatever may be the comparative worth of this 
 peculiar faculty, no poet ever had it in a higher degree or 
 cultivated it with more patient and strenuous industry than 
 Mr. Tennyson." A. C. Swinburne. 
 
 " For the most part he wrote of the every day loves and 
 duties of men and women ; of the primal pains and joys of 
 humanity ; of the aspirations and trials which are common to 
 all ages and all classes and independent even of the diseases of 
 civilization, but he made them new and surprising by the art 
 which he added to them, by beauty of thought, tenderness of 
 feeling, and exquisiteness of shaping." Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " He gave them [his poems] too much adornment and 
 polishing ; he seemed like an epicurean in style as well as in 
 beauty." Tame. 
 
 " Warmed by his imagination, clad in his felicitous lan- 
 guage, or penetrated by his refined sentiment, the hackneyed 
 theme or common object are reproduced with a new and en- 
 dearing beauty." H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 " It [" Gareth and Lynette "] is drawn like a series of 
 vignettes in interlacing arabesque patterns, . . . remind- 
 ing us not only of the detached cleverness with which it 
 abounds but also of the effort to make them clearer. . . . 
 Without his intention or will, or even expectation, he has 
 stimulated into existence a school of what might be called 
 decorative poetry." Bayard Taylor. 
 
784 TENNYSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " While Enoch was abroad on wrathful seas, 
 Or often journeying landward ; for in truth 
 Enoch's white horse and Enoch's ocean spoil, 
 In ocean-smelling osier, and his face, 
 Rough-reddened with a thousand winter gales, 
 Not only to the market cross were known, 
 But in the leafy lanes behind the down, 
 Far as the portal-warding lion-whelp 
 And peacock yew-tree of the lonely Hall, 
 Whose Friday fare was Enoch's ministering." 
 
 Enoch Arden. 
 
 11 He spoke, and one among his gentlewomen 
 Display'd a splendid silk of foreign loom, 
 Where, like a shoaling sea, the lovely blue 
 Play'd into green, and thicker down the front 
 With jewels ran the sward with drops of dew, 
 When all night long a cloud clings to the hill, 
 And with the dawn ascending lets the day 
 Strike where it clung : so thickly shone the gems." 
 
 Geraint and Enid. 
 
 " One look'd all rosetree, and another wore 
 A close-set robe of jasmine sown with stars : 
 This had a rosy sea of gilly flowers 
 About it ; this, a milky-way on earth, 
 Like visions of the Northern dreamer's heavens, 
 A lily-avenue climbing to the doors ; 
 One, almost to the martin-haunted eaves, 
 A summer burial deep in the hollyhocks." 
 
 Aylmer's Field. 
 
 6. Moral Elevation Optimism. " Without being a 
 pedant he is moral ; ... he does not rebel against society 
 and life ; he speaks of God and the soul nobly, tenderly, without 
 ecclesiastical prejudice. . . . We may listen when we quit 
 
TENNYSON 785 
 
 lim, without being shocked by the contrast, to the grave voice 
 of the master of the house, who reads evening prayers before 
 the kneeling servants. . . . He has not rudely trenched 
 upon the truth and passion. He has risen to the height of 
 noble and tender sentiments. He has gleaned from all nature 
 and history what was most lofty and amiable." Taine. 
 
 "Tennyson always speaks from the side of virtue ; and not 
 of that new and strange virtue which some of our later poets 
 have exalted, and which, when it is stripped of its fine gar- 
 ments, turned out to be nothing else than the unrestrained 
 indulgence of every natural impulse; but rather of that old- 
 fashioned virtue whose laws are ' self- reverence, self-control, 
 self-knowledge,' and which finds its highest embodiment in 
 the morality of the New Testament. . . . There is a 
 spiritual courage in his work, a force of faith which con- 
 quers doubt and darkness, a light of inward hope which burns 
 dauntless under the shadow of death. Tennyson is the poet 
 of faith ; faith as distinguished from cold dogmatism and the 
 acceptance of traditional creeds ; faith which does not ignore 
 doubt and mystery, but triumphs over them and faces the un- 
 known with fearless heart. The poem entitled ' Vastness ' is 
 an expression of this faith. . . . Nothing that Tennyson 
 has ever written is more beautiful in body and soul than 
 * Crossing the Bar.' . . . The effect of Christianity upon 
 the poetry of Tennyson may be felt, first of all, in its general 
 moral quality. By this it is not meant that he is always preach- 
 ing. But at the same time the poet can hardly help revealing, 
 more by tone and accent than by definite words, his moral 
 sympathies. . . . He is in no sense a rose-water optimist. 
 But he is in the truest sense a meliorist. . . . He rests 
 his faith on the uplifting power of Christianity. . . . The 
 chief peril which threatens the permanence of Christian faith 
 and morals is none other than the malaria of modern letters 
 an atmosphere of dull, heavy, faithless materialism. Into this 
 narcotic air the poetry of Tennyson blows like a pure wind 
 50 
 
786 TENNYSON 
 
 from a loftier and serener height. . . . Tennyson is es- 
 sentially and characteristically a poet with a message. His 
 poetry does not merely exist for the sake of its own perfec- 
 tion of form. It is something more than the sound of one 
 who has a lovely voice and can play skilfully upon an instru- 
 ment. It is a poetry with a meaning and a purpose. It is a 
 voice that has something to say to us about life. . . . 
 When we read them [Tennyson's Poems] we feel our hearts 
 uplifted, we feel that, after all, it is worth while to struggle 
 toward the light, it is worth while to try to be upright and 
 generous and true and loyal and pure, for virtue is victory, 
 and goodness is the only fadeless and immortal crown. 
 He teaches the gospel of personal love and help, which is 
 Christianity. . . . The secret of the poet's influence must 
 lie in his spontaneous witness to the reality and supremacy of 
 the moral life. His music must thrill us with the conviction 
 that the humblest child of man has a duty, an ideal, a destiny. 
 He must sing of justice and of love as a sure reward, a stead- 
 fast law, the safe port and haven of the soul. . . . There 
 is hardly one of Tennyson's poems in which this testimony is 
 not clearly and distinctly uttered. The ideal which shines 
 through all of his poetry is simply the example of ' Him who 
 wrought with human hands, the creeds of creeds,' etc. We 
 have turned to the pages of * In Memoriam ' for that human 
 consolation which is only less than divine. I suppose that 
 there is only one Book which, for these last forty years, has 
 done more to comfort sorrow." Henry van Dyke. 
 
 "Like Robert Browning, Lord Tennyson, though he had 
 his moods of sorrow and perplexity, was an optimist, who had 
 achieved his right to optimism by the fighting down of despair 
 and doubt." F. W. Farrar. 
 
 "Tennyson, like every true poet, has the strongest feeling 
 of the spiritual and almost mystic character of the associations 
 attaching to the distant sail which takes the ship on its lonely 
 journey to an invisible port, and has more than once used it 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 to lift the mind into the attitude of hope or trust." R. H. 
 Button. 
 
 " Mr. Tennyson's sense of a beneficent unfolding in our 
 life of a divine purpose, lifts him through and over the com- 
 mon dejections of men." Edward Dowden. 
 
 1 'Alfred Tennyson has given many a fatal blow to many 
 an old narrow maxim in his poems; he has breathed into his 
 later ones the generous and the victorious breath of noble 
 philanthropy, the offspring of the great renovator the Chris- 
 tian religion. . . . His moral views, whether directly or 
 indirectly conveyed, are healthy, manly, and simple ; and the 
 truth and delicacy of his sentiments is attested by the depth 
 of pathos which he can wake from the commonest incidents, 
 told in the simplest manner, yet deriving all their interest 
 from the manner of telling." W. M. Howitt. 
 
 "I should say he was pre-eminently the prophet of faith. 
 His message exhorted all to have faith in man and in God. 
 He held that when men believed in man they found ground 
 to believe in God." W. T. Stead. 
 
 " The chastity and moral elevation of this volume [" Idylls 
 of the King"], its essential and profound though not didac- 
 tic Christianity, are such as cannot be matched throughout 
 the circle of English literature in conjunction with an equal 
 power." W. E. Gladstone. 
 
 " He wrote only of that of which he loved to write, that 
 which moved him to joy or reverence, that which he thought 
 of good report for its loveliness. Even the things he did as 
 Poet Laureate, when, if ever, he might have been untrue to 
 this, have no tinge of the world about them. . . . When 
 the moral conduct of life, when the great sanctions of moral- 
 ity are to be represented, Tennyson impassions them and lifts 
 them into poetry. This is one of his greatest powers." 
 Stopford Brooke. 
 
 " Hundreds of Tennyson's lines and phrases have become 
 fixed in the popular memory; and there is scarcely one of 
 
788 TENNYSON 
 
 them that is not suggestive or consoling or heartening. He 
 delights to sing of honor and chastity and fidelity, and his 
 most voluptuous measures celebrate no greater indulgence 
 than indolence and the sensuous delight of life. His con- 
 scious teaching has always been wholesome and elevating." 
 Bayard Taylor. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I held it truth with him who sings 
 To one clear harp in divers tones, 
 That men may rise on stepping-stones 
 Of their dead selves to higher things." 
 
 In Memoriam. 
 " O lift your natures up : 
 
 Embrace our aims ; work out your freedom. Girls, 
 Knowledge is now no more a fountain sealed : 
 Drink deep, until the habits of the slave ; 
 The sins of emptiness, gossip and spite 
 And slander, die. Better not be at all 
 Than not be noble." The Princess. 
 
 " Oh yet we trust that somehow good 
 Will be the final goal of ill, 
 To pangs of nature, sins of will, 
 Defects of doubt, and taints of blood ; 
 
 " That nothing walks with aimless feet ; 
 That not one life shall be destroy'd, 
 Or cast as rubbish to the void, 
 When God hath made the pile complete ; 
 
 " That not a worm is cloven in vain ; 
 That not a moth with vain desire 
 Is shrivell'd in a fruitless fire, 
 Or but subserves another's gain. 
 
 " Behold we know not anything ; 
 
 I can but trust that good shall fall 
 At last far off at last, to all, 
 And every winter change to spring." In Memoriam. 
 
TENNYSON 789 
 
 7. Biblical Flavor and Diction. It has been said that 
 if every Bible in existence were to be entirely destroyed, the 
 cardinal doctrines of Christianity could be determined by the 
 biblical references in Shakespeare's plays. The same is true 
 in a great degree of Tennyson. Van Dyke collects from his 
 poems no less than three hundred explicit references to the 
 Bible, to say nothing of the Christian spirit that pervades 
 every page. 
 
 "When we come to speak of the biblical scenes and 
 characters to which Tennyson refers, we find so many that we 
 have difficulty to choose. ... It would be impossible 
 even to enumerate all of Tennyson's allusions to the life of 
 Christ, from the visit of the Magi, which appears in the 
 ' Morte d'Arthur,' and The Holy Grail ' down to the lines in 
 ' Balin and Balan ' which tell of ' that same spear wherewith 
 the Roman pierced the side of Christ.' . . . One cause 
 of his popularity is because there is so much of the Bible in 
 Tennyson. How much, few even of his ardent admirers 
 begin to understand. ' And the wicked cease from 
 
 troubling, and the weary are at rest,' is perhaps the best il- 
 lustration of Tennyson's felicitous use of words of the Script- 
 ure. But there are others, hardly less perfect, in the wonder- 
 ful sermon which the rector in ' Aylmer's Field ' delivers 
 after the death of Edith and Leolin. It is a mosaic of Bible 
 language, most curiously wrought, and fused into one living 
 soul by the heart of an intense sorrow. * The Idylls of the 
 King ' are full of delicate and suggestive allusions to the 
 Bible." Henry van Dyke. 
 
 " Not all the musical charm of Tennyson's poetry, nor its 
 peerless art, nor its luxuriousness of imagination, nor its 
 marvellous pathos has so fully invested it with the quality that 
 endures as has his loyalty to the revelation of God found in 
 the Holy Scripture and his association of his own song with 
 that word which ' liveth and abideth for ever.'" W. E. 
 Gladstone. 
 
790 TENNYSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Cast all your cares on God ; that anchor holds. 
 Is He not yonder in the uttermost 
 Parts of the morning ? If I flee to these 
 Can I go from Him ? and the sea is His, 
 The sea is His, he made it." Enoch Arden. 
 
 " Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 Believing where we cannot prove ; 
 
 ** Thine are these orbs of light and shade ; 
 Thou madest life in man and brute ; 
 Thou madest Death ; and lo, Thy foot 
 Is on the skull which Thou hast made. 
 
 " Thou wilt not leave us in the dust : 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 And Thou hast made him ; Thou art just. 
 
 " And all is well, tho' faith and form 
 Be sundered in the night of fear ; 
 Well roars the storm to those that hear 
 A deeper voice across the storm." In Memoriam. 
 
 " And tho' thou numberest with the followers 
 Of one who cried, ' Leave all and follow me,' 
 Thee therefore with His light about thy feet, 
 Thee with His message ringing in thine ears, 
 Thee shall thy brother man, the Lord from Heaven, 
 Born of a village girl, carpenter's son, 
 Wonderful, Prince of Peace, The Mighty God, . 
 Count the more base idolater of the two." 
 
 Aylmer's Field. 
 
 ' 8. Yearning Infinite Regret. This is the key-note 
 
 ' of Tennyson's masterpiece, and is characteristic of very many 
 
 of his other poems. While he is not a pessimist, and while 
 
 he has not the maddening thirst for the unknown that charac- 
 
TENNYSON 7Qt 
 
 terizes Shelley, his muse is often pensive, and delights in 
 dwelling upon that which is "loved and lost." 
 
 " But then the song [" Break, Break, Break "] returns again 
 to the helpless breaking of the sea at the foot of the crags it 
 cannot climb, not this time to express the inadequacy of 
 human speech to express human yearnings but the defeat of 
 those very yearnings themselves. . . . He can conceive 
 with the subtlest power the passionate longing for death of a 
 mortal endowed with immortality, doomed like Tithonus to 
 outlive all life and joy and tremble at the awful prospect of a 
 solitary eternity of decay. . . . The ' Passing of Arthur ' 
 contains lines resonant with the highest chords of spiritual 
 yearning and bewildered trust, lines which echo and re-echo 
 in one's imagination like the dying tones of the organ in a 
 great cathedral's aisles." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 " The wisdom, yearnings, aspirations of a noble mind are 
 here [in " In Memoriam "] ; the poet's imagination, shut in 
 upon itself, strives to irradiate with inward light the mystic 
 problems of life." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The note of restrained and tender melancholy has always 
 been one of the chief features of Tennyson's poetry. It is not 
 obtrusive, but it is pervasive ; it is rarely bitter or cynical, 
 but it is always there. It is apparent in the choice of subject 
 even in those early poems [" Juvenilia "]. Death and change 
 strike the key-note of the volume." W. J. Dawson. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Dark house, by which once more I stand 
 Here in the long unlovely street, 
 Doors, where my heart was used to beat 
 So quickly, waiting for a hand. 
 
 " A hand that can be clasped no more 
 Behold me, for I cannot sleep ; 
 And like a guilty thing I creep 
 At earliest morning to the door. 
 
792 TENNYSON 
 
 " He is not here ; but far away 
 The noise of life begins again, 
 And ghastly thro' the drizzling rain 
 On the bald street breaks the blank day." 
 
 In Memoriam. 
 " And the stately ships go on 
 To their haven under the hill ; 
 But oh for the touch of a vanish'd hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still ! 
 
 " Break, Break, Break, 
 At the foot of thy crags, O Sea ! 
 But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
 Will never come back to me." 
 
 To E. L., on his Travels in Greece. 
 
 " Oh that 'twere possible 
 After long grief and pain 
 To find the arms of my true love 
 Round me once again ! 
 
 " A shadow flits before me, 
 Not thou, but like to thee : 
 Ah Christ, that it were possible 
 For one short hour to see 
 The souls we loved, that they might tell us 
 What and where they be. " Maud. 
 
 9. Dramatic Power. " I would not be surprised to 
 hear that any true critic would rate ' Queen Mary,' whether 
 in dramatic force or in general power, below ' Henry VIII.,' 
 but my own impression is that it is a decidedly finer work of 
 dramatic art. . . . The great poet of the nineteenth cen- 
 tury will certainly never be regarded as a great dramatist. 
 But that, being the great lyric poet he is, he should be so 
 great even as he is in drama, will always be his singular dis- 
 tinction." It. If. Hutton. 
 
 " His greatest achievement still is that noblest of modern 
 episodes, the canto entitled ' Guinevere,' surcharged with 
 
TENNYSON 793 
 
 tragic pathos and high dramatic power. He never has so 
 reached the passio vera of the early dramatists as in this im- 
 posing scene." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " It cannot, indeed, be doubted that if Tennyson had 
 devoted himself to the dramatic form from the first he might 
 have been original and masterly in that as he has been in 
 lyrism. All along he has given striking proofs of a power 
 to seize and portray character in phases and wholes." -J. M. 
 Robertson. 
 
 " His dramatic experiments, like ' Queen Mary/ are not, 
 on the whole, successful, though it would be unjust to deny 
 dramatic power to the poet who has written, upon the one 
 hand 'Guinevere' and the 'Passing of Arthur,' and on the 
 other the homely dialectic monologue of the ' Northern 
 Farmer.' . . . The interview between Arthur and his 
 fallen queen is marked by a moral sublimity and a tragic in- 
 tensity which move the soul as nobly as any scene in modern 
 literature." Henry A. Beers. 
 
 " Tennyson lacks the dramatic quality, but he possesses a 
 faculty which is sometimes mistaken for it the representative 
 faculty. It is present in the ' Northern Farmer/ ' The North- 
 ern Cobbler/ etc., which may be clever character studies, but 
 which certainly are not dramatic poems." JZ. H. Stoddard. 
 
 11 With a force of dramatic sympathy which it would be 
 quite reasonable to compare with Shakespeare's, Tennyson 
 enters into the person of the girl who is about to die, Iphi- 
 genia, and enables the imaginative reader to see through her 
 eyes, to gasp and sigh with her in her swooning anguish. All 
 is intensely real." Peter Bayne. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " To whom replied King Arthur, much in wrath : 
 ' Ah, miserable and unkind, untrue, 
 Unknightly, traitor-hearted ! Woe is me ! 
 Authority forgets a dying king, 
 
794 TENNYSON 
 
 Laid widow' d of the power in his eye 
 
 That bowed the will. I see thee what thou art ; 
 
 For thou, the latest left of all my knights, 
 
 In whom should meet the offices of all, 
 
 Thou wouldst betray me for the precious hilt ; 
 
 Either from lust of gold, or like a girl 
 
 Valuing the giddy pleasure of the eyes. 
 
 Yet, for a man may fail in duty twice, 
 
 And the third time may prosper, get thee hence : 
 
 But, if thou spare to fling Excalibur, 
 
 I will arise and slay thee with my hands.' " 
 
 The Passing of Arthur. 
 
 11 But how to take last leave of all I loved ? 
 
 golden hair, with which I used to play 
 Not knowing ! O imperial moulded form, 
 And beauty such as never woman wore, 
 Until it came a kingdom's curse with thee 
 
 1 cannot touch thy lips : they are not mine, 
 
 But Lancelot's : nay, they never were the King's. 
 
 I cannot take thy hand ; that too is flesh, 
 
 As in the flesh thou hast sinn'd ; and mine own flesh, 
 
 Here looking down on thine polluted, cries, 
 
 ' I loathe thee.'" Guinevere. 
 
 " Anything fallen again ? nay what was there left to fall ? 
 I have taken them home, I have numbered the bones, I have 
 
 hidden them all. 
 
 What am I saying ? and what are you ? do you come as a spy ? 
 Falls ? what falls ? who knows ? As the tree falls so must it lie. 
 
 " Who let her in ? how long has she been ? you what have you 
 
 heard ? 
 
 Why did you sit so quiet ? you never have spoken a word. 
 Oh, to pray with me yes a lady none of their spies 
 But the night has crept into my heart, and begun to darken my 
 
 eyes." Rizpah. 
 
 10. Microscopic Observation Peculiar Attitude 
 toward Nature. " Not less remarkable is the identity of 
 
TENNYSON 795 
 
 spirit in Tennyson and Milton in their delicate yet wholesome 
 sympathy with Nature, their perception of the relation of 
 her woods and aspects to the human heart. . . . They 
 [" Idylls "] are full of little pictures which show that Tennyson 
 has studied nature at first hand and that he understands how 
 to catch and reproduce the most fleeting and delicate expres- 
 sions of her face. . . . Most wonderful of all is his knowl- 
 edge of the sea and his power to describe it. He has looked 
 at it from every standpoint and caught every phase of its 
 changing aspect. ... He has caught more [than Words- 
 worth] of the throbbing and passionate and joyous voices of 
 the world ; he has not entered so deeply into the silence and 
 solemnity of guardian mountains and sleeping lakes and broad 
 bare skies ; but he has felt more keenly the thrills and flushes 
 of Nature the strange, sudden, perplexed, triumphant im- 
 pulses of that eager seeking and tremulous welcoming of love 
 which flows like life-blood through all animate things. . . . 
 While the Lady of Shalott dwells in her pure seclusion, the 
 sun shines, the lily blossoms on the river's breast, and the blue 
 sky is unclouded ; but when she passes the fatal line, and the 
 curse has fallen on her, then 
 
 ' In the stormy east wind straining, 
 The pale yellow woods are waning, 
 The broad stream in his banks complaining, 
 Heavily the low sky raining. 
 Over tower'd Camelot.' 
 
 Mr. Ruskin says that this is ' pathetic fallacy ; ' for, as a mat- 
 ter of fact, the clouds do not weep, nor do the rivers com- 
 plain, and he maintains that to speak of them as if they did 
 these things is to speak with a certain degree of falsehood which 
 is unworthy of the highest kind of art. But Mr. Ruskin may 
 say what he pleases about Milton and Tennyson without much 
 likelihood of persuading any sane person that their poetry is 
 not profoundly true to Nature and most true precisely in its 
 
796 TENNYSON 
 
 recognition of her power to echo and reflect the feelings of 
 man." Henry van Dyke. 
 
 " In describing scenery, his microscopic eye and marvel- 
 lously delicate ear are exercised to the utmost in detecting the 
 minutest relations and most evanescent melodies of the objects 
 before him, in order that his representation shall include every- 
 thing which is important to their full perception. His pict- 
 ures of English rural scenery give the inner spirit as well as 
 the outward form of the objects, and represent them, also, in 
 their relation to the mind which is gazing on them. The pict- 
 ure in his mind is spread out before his detecting and dissect- 
 ing intellect, to be transformed to words only when it can be 
 done with the most refined exactness, both as regards color 
 and form and melody." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " He has a striking microscopic faculty, on which his poetic 
 imagination works. No poet has so many and such accurate 
 references to the vegetable world, and yet at the same time 
 references so thoroughly poetic. ... He never tired of 
 reflecting in his poetry the physiology of flowers and trees and 
 buds. . . . His insight into them does not come through 
 his sympathy with active life, as Shakespeare's did : it comes 
 of the careful scrutinizing eye of the naturalist feeding the 
 brooding heart of a poet. It is the scenery of the mill, the 
 garden, the chase, the down, the rich pastures, the harvest 
 fields, the palace pleasure grounds, the Lord of Burleigh's fair 
 domains. . . . There is always complexity in the beauty 
 which fascinates Lord Tennyson most. . . . Note espe- 
 cially the realism (which Tennyson never fails to show) in 
 explanation of especial fragrance in the air. . . . Lord 
 Tennyson has wonderful power of putting nature under con- 
 tribution to help him in delineating moods of feeling. . . . 
 No poet has ever had a greater mastery than Tennyson over 
 the power of real things." R. H. Hutton. 
 
 11 One especially rich source, both for imagery and idea, is 
 to be found in the ' language of flowers ' made use of by the 
 
 
TENNYSON 
 
 poet. Throughout his landscape poems the rich botany of the 
 poet's language gives a vividness to the poetry much needed 
 in the realms of abstract thought. . . . Notice, too, the 
 accurate observation involved in ' crimson fringes ' of daisy, 
 'earlier and later primrose.' "John Sterling. 
 
 " In ' Mariana' the poet showed an art then peculiar, but 
 since grown familiar, of heightening the central feeling by 
 landscape accessories. The level waste, the stagnant sluices, 
 the neglected garden, the wind in the single poplar, re-en- 
 force, by their monotonous sympathy, the loneliness, the 
 hopeless waiting and weariness of life in the one human figure 
 of the poem." Henry A. Beers. 
 
 " A series of physical descriptions constantly makes ns sen- 
 sible of the actual world, while inwrought with this the feel- 
 ing of the piece, whether love or sorrow or remorse, is kept 
 vividly before us in all its abstract significance." H. T. 
 Tuckerman. 
 
 " Mr. Tennyson, while fully adopting Wordsworth's prin- 
 ciple from the beginning, seemed by instinctive taste to have 
 escaped the snares which proved so subtle for Keats and for 
 Wordsworth. . . . Above all, . . . there was a 
 hushed and reverent awe, a sense of the mystery, the infini- 
 tude, the aw fulness, as well as of the mere beauty of wayside 
 things, which invested these poems as a whole with a peculiar 
 richness, depth, and majesty of tone, beside which both Keats's 
 and Wordsworth's methods of handling pastoral subjects looked 
 like the coloring of Giulio Romano beside Titian. . . . 
 It is just because Mr. Tennyson is, far more than Wordsworth, 
 mystical, and what an ignorant and money-getting generation, 
 idolatrous of mere sensuous activity, calls 'dreamy,' that he 
 has become the greatest naturalistic poet which England has 
 seen for several centuries." Charles Kings ley. 
 
798 TENNYSON 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " With blackest moss the flower-pots 
 
 Were thickly crusted, one and all : 
 The rusted nails fell from the knots 
 
 That held the pear to the gable- wall. 
 The broken sheds look'd sad and strange ; 
 
 Unlifted was the clinking latch ; 
 
 Weeded and worn the ancient thatch 
 Upon the lonely moated grange. 
 
 She only said, ' My life is dreary, 
 He cometh not,' she said ; 
 
 She said, ' I am aweary, aweary, 
 I would that I were dead ! ' " Mariana. 
 
 11 Willows whiten, aspens quiver, 
 Little breezes dusk and shiver 
 Thro' the wave that runs forever 
 By the island in the river 
 
 Flowing down to Camelot. 
 Four gray walls and four gray towers 
 Overlook a space of flowers, 
 And the silent isle embowers 
 
 The Lady of Shalott." 
 
 The Lady of Shalott. 
 
 " The pale blood of the wizard at her touch 
 Took gayer colors, like an opal warm'd. 
 She blamed herself for telling hearsay tales : 
 She shook from fear, and for her fault she wept 
 Of petulancy ; she called him lord and liege, 
 Her seer, her bard, her silver star of eve, 
 Her God, her Merlin, the one passionate love 
 Of her whole life ; and ever overhead 
 Bellow'd the tempest, and the rotten branch 
 Snapt in the rushing of the river-rain 
 Above them ; and in the change of glare and gloom 
 Her eyes and neck glittering went and came ; 
 Till now the storm, its burst of passion spent, 
 Moaning and calling out of other lands, 
 
TENNYSON 799 
 
 Had left the ravaged woodland yet once more 
 
 To peace ; and what should not have been had been ; 
 
 For Merlin, overtalked and overworn, 
 
 Had yielded, told her all the charm, and slept." 
 
 Merlin and Vivian. 
 
 II. Repose Peacefulness. " In Tennyson we have 
 the strong repose of art, whereof as the perfection of nature 
 the world is slow to tire. . . . His stream is sweet, 
 assured, strong ; but how seldom the abrupt bend, the plunge 
 of the cataract, the thunder of the spray ! . . . The 
 strain of ' In Memoriam ' is ever calm, even in rehearsing a 
 by-gone violence of emotion along its passage from woe to 
 desolation and anon, by tranquil stages, to reverence, thought, 
 aspiration, endurance, hope. On sea and shore the elements 
 are calm ; even the wild winds and snows of winter are 
 brought in hand and made subservient, as the bells ring out 
 the dying year, to the new birth of Nature and the sure pur- 
 pose of eternal God." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " I know no descriptive poetry that has the delicate spirit- 
 ual genius of that passage [from " In Memoriam "], its sweet 
 mystery, its subdued lustre, its living truth, its rapture of 
 peace." X. H. Button . 
 
 " Some passages of the * Lotos Eaters ' give a sensation of 
 luxurious repose far more conspicuously than the ' Castle of 
 Indolence.'" H. T. Tuckerman. 
 
 "There is nothing stirring, nothing restless, nothing am- 
 bitious in its [Tennyson's art] tone ; it has no freaks and 
 eccentricities by which it seeks to strike the public notice. 
 . But the very nature of Tennyson's genius is to be 
 contented with what is. It is happy in itself as the bird upon 
 the bough. It is rolled into itself, living and rejoicing in its 
 own being and blessedness." W. M. Howitt. 
 
 " Disorder of thought, of feeling, and of will is, with Mr. 
 Tennyson, the evil of evils, the pain of pains. . . . Let 
 us start by saying that Mr. Tennyson has a strong dignity 
 
8OO TENNYSON 
 
 and efficiency of law of law understood in its widest mean- 
 ing. Energy nobly controlled, an ordered activity, delight 
 his imagination. Violence, extravagance, immoderate force, 
 the swerving from appointed ends, revolt these are with 
 Mr. Tennyson the supreme manifestations of evil. 
 Although we find the idea of God entering largely into his 
 poems, there is little recognition of special contact of the soul 
 with the Divine Being in any supernatural way of quiet or 
 ecstasy. There is, on the contrary, a disposition to rest 
 in the orderly manifestation of God as the supreme Law- 
 Giver, and even to identify him with his presentation of him- 
 self in the physical and moral order of the universe. Mr. 
 Tennyson finds law present throughout all nature, but there 
 is no part of nature in which he dwells with so much satisfac- 
 tion upon its presence as in human society. . . . His 
 imagination is forever haunted by ' the vision of the world 
 and all the wonder that would be.' But the hopes and aspira- 
 tions of Mr. Tennyson are not those of the radical or move- 
 ment character. He is in all his poems conservative as well 
 as liberal. . . . Mr. Tennyson's political doctrine is in 
 entire agreement with his ideal of human character. As the 
 exemplar of all nations is the one in which highest wisdom is 
 united with complete self-government, so the ideal man is he 
 whose life is led to sovereign power by self-knowledge result- 
 ing in self-control and self-control growing perfect in self- 
 reverence. ... In both [the poem to the Prince Consort 
 and that to the Duke of Wellington] the characters are drawn 
 with fine discrimination, but in both the crowning virtue of 
 the dead is declared to have been the virtue of obedience, 
 that of self-subjugation to the law of duty. . . . Self- 
 reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, the recognition of a 
 divine order and of one's place in that order, faithful adhe- 
 sion to the law of one's highest life these are the elements 
 from which is formed the human character." Edward 
 Dow den. 
 
TENNYSON 8oi 
 
 " Some of the blank verse poems a style almost unat- 
 tempted in the earlier series have a quiet completeness and 
 depth, a sweetness arising from the happy balance of thought, 
 feeling, and expression that ranks them among the riches of 
 our recent literature. . . . There is in this work [" Ulys- 
 ses"] a delightful epic tone and a clear unimpassioned wis- 
 dom, quietly carving its sage words and graceful figures on 
 pale but lasting marble. . . . The unrhymed verse has 
 a quiet fulness of sound and all the delineation of a clear yet 
 rich completeness of truth that render the little work [" The 
 Gardener's Daughter"], though far from the loftiest, yet one 
 of the most delightful we know." John Sterling. 
 
 " In the poetry of Tennyson, to use an image furnished by 
 itself, all those thunder-clouds of doubt, fear, and ambition, 
 which had long been roofing the European world, were still 
 visible, only they floated in an evening atmosphere and had 
 grown golden all about the sky. . . . That enveloping 
 calm, which Tennyson knows so well how to combine with 
 power of expression." Peter Bayne. 
 
 " In this passage [the description of a pathway in " The 
 Gardener's Daughter "] we have a not inapt illustration of 
 the strongest tendency of Tennyson's mind. It is from such 
 a neat and quiet bower of peace that he looks out upon the 
 world. " W. J. Daw son. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Calm is the morn without a sound, 
 Calm as to suit a greater grief, 
 And only thro' the faded leaf, 
 
 The chestnut pattering to the ground. 
 
 Calm and deep peace on this high wold, 
 And on these dews that drench the furze, 
 And all the silvery gossamers 
 
 That twinkle into green and gold. 
 
802 TENNYSON 
 
 " Calm and still light on yon great plain 
 That sweeps with all its autumn bowers, 
 And crowded farms and lessening towers, 
 To mingle with the bounding main : 
 
 " Calm and deep peace in this wide air, 
 These leaves that redden to the fall ; 
 And in my heart, if calm at all, 
 If any calm, a calm despair." In Memoriam. 
 
 " Live yet live 
 
 Shall sharpest pathos blight us, knowing all 
 Life needs for life is possible to will 
 Live happy ; tend thy flowers ; be tended by 
 My blessing : Should my Shadow cross thy thoughts 
 Too sadly for thy peace, remand it thou 
 For calmer hours to Memory's darkest hold, 
 If not to be forgotten, not at once 
 Not all forgotten. Should it cross thy dreams, 
 Oh might it come like one that looks content." 
 
 Love and Duty. 
 
 " One walk'd between his wife and child, 
 With measured footfall firm and mild, 
 And now and then he gravely smiled. 
 
 " The prudent partner of his blood 
 Lean'd on him, faithful, gentle, good, 
 Wearing the rose of womanhood. 
 
 " And in their double love secure, 
 The little maiden walked demure, 
 Pacing with downward eyelids pure. 
 
 " These three made unity so sweet, 
 My frozen heart began to beat, 
 Remembering its ancient heat. 
 
 " I blest them, and they wander'd on : 
 I spoke, but answer came there none : 
 The dull and bitter voice was gone. 
 
TENNYSON 803 
 
 A second voice was at mine ear, 
 
 A little whisper silver-clear, 
 
 A murmur, ' Be of better cheer.' 
 
 " As from some blissful neighborhood, 
 A notice faintly understood, 
 ' I see the end, and know the good.' " 
 
 The Two Voices. 
 
 12. Tenderness Pathos." The tenderness of Ten- 
 nyson is one of his remarkable qualities not so much in it- 
 self, for other poets have been more tender but in combina- 
 tion with his rough powers. We are not surprised that his 
 rugged strength is capable of the mighty and tragic tenderness 
 of 'Rizpah,' but we could not think at first that he could feel 
 and realize the exquisite tenderness of ' Elaine.' ... It 
 is a wonderful thing to have so wide a tenderness, and only a 
 great poet can possess it and use it well." Stopford Brooke . 
 
 "Take the stanzas entitled 'A Farewell,' the pathos of 
 which, if it be difficult to account for, it is not the less im- 
 possible to resist. A simple touch this a mere ejaculation of 
 tender emotion, which seems as if it might have escaped from 
 anybody, yet it shows how truly the poet's feeling vibrates 
 in sympathy with nature ; otherwise how should so simple a 
 tone out of the heart awaken such an echo in our own?" 
 /. R. Spedding. 
 
 "Tennyson is a great master of pathos; knows the very 
 tones that go to the heart ; can arrest every one of those looks 
 of upbraiding or appeal by which human woe brings the tear 
 into the human eye. . . . The pathos is deep ; but it is 
 the majesty, not the prostration of grief." Peter Bayne. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Most noble lord, Sir Lancelot of the Lake, 
 I, sometime call'd the maid of Astolat, 
 Come, for you left me, taking no farewell, 
 Hither, to take my last farewell of you. 
 
804 TENNYSON 
 
 I loved you, and my love had no return, 
 
 And therefore my true love has been my death. 
 
 And therefore to my Lady Guinevere, 
 
 And to all other ladies, I make moan. 
 
 Pray for my soul, and yield me burial. 
 
 Pray for my soul, thou too, Sir Lancelot, 
 
 For thou art a knight peerless." 
 
 Lancelot and Elaine. 
 
 " Too hard to bear ! why did they take me thence ? 
 O God Almighty, blessed Saviour, Thou 
 That didst uphold me on my lonely isle, 
 Uphold me, Father, in my loneliness 
 A little longer ! aid me, give me strength 
 Not to tell her, never to let her know. 
 Help me not to break in upon her peace. 
 My children too ! must I not speak to these ? 
 They know me not. I should betray myself. 
 Never : No father's kiss for me the girl, 
 So like her mother, and the boy, my son." 
 
 Enoch Arden. 
 
 " ' But now, Sir, let me have my boy, for you 
 Will make him hard, and he will learn to slight 
 His father's memory ; and take Dora back, 
 And let all this be as it was before.' 
 So Mary said, and Dora hid her face 
 By Mary. There was silence in the room ; 
 And all at once the old man burst in sobs : 
 ' I have been to blame to blame. 
 I have killed my son. 
 
 I have kill'd him but I loved him my dear son. 
 May God forgive me ! I have been to blame. 
 Kiss me, my children.' 
 
 Then they clung about 
 
 The old man's neck, and kiss'd him many times. 
 And all the man was broken with remorse ; 
 And all his love came back a hundredfold ; 
 And for three hours he sobb'd o'er William's child." 
 
 Dora. 
 
HOLMES, 1809-1894 
 
 Biographical Outline. Oliver Wendell Holmes, born 
 August 29, 1809, in Cambridge, Mass. ; father a graduate 
 of Yale College, a writer of some local reputation, a rigid 
 Calvinist, and during most of his life pastor of the First Con- 
 gregational Church of Cambridge ; his mother, whom the 
 poet more resembled, was descended from an old Dutch 
 family of Albany, N. Y., by the name of Wendell; Holmes 
 begins his education at a dame's school ; at fifteen he is in 
 school at Cambridgeport, and goes thence, in 1824, to Phillips 
 Academy, at Andover ; the boy early manifests a reaction 
 against the narrow tenets of Calvinism, and is greatly influ- 
 enced by the atmosphere of Unitarianism that pervaded Cam- 
 bridge during his youth; Holmes was not precocious as a 
 verse-maker ; the reading that most influenced his poetic taste 
 in early days was Gray's "Elegy" and Pope's "Homer;" 
 in the summer of 1825 he enters Harvard College, thus 
 becoming a member of the famous class of 1829; while in 
 college Holmes writes to his Andover chum and life-long 
 friend, Phineas Barnes, " I smoke most devoutly and sing most 
 unmusically ; have written poetry for the Annual, and have 
 seen my literary bantlings smothered in green silk and repos- 
 ing in the drawing-room : " after graduating from Harvard, 
 in 1829, he enters the Harvard Law School at Cambridge, 
 and devotes himself to law for one year, but finds it, as he 
 says, "very cold and cheerless about the threshold;" in 
 1830 he writes to Barnes, "I have been writing poetry like 
 a madman ; " the reference is to his contributions to the 
 Collegian, a paper then published by the undergraduates of 
 Harvard; these contributions include "The Spectre Pig," 
 
 805 
 
806 HOLMES 
 
 "The Mysterious Visitor," and many other verses which 
 Holmes refused afterward to republish ; during his year in the 
 law school he also writes his since widely known poem " Old 
 Ironsides;" the old frigate Constitution, then lying in the 
 Navy Yard in Charlestown, had been condemned by the Navy 
 Department to be destroyed ; on reading of the proposed 
 action, Holmes seized a scrap of paper, wrote rapidly with a 
 pencil his poetical protest, and sent it to the Daily Advertiser ; 
 the poem was reprinted all through the United States, and 
 was scattered about Washington as a handbill, with the result 
 that the old war-ship was not destroyed ; in the autumn of 
 1830 he gives up the law and enters a private medical school 
 in Boston ; in 1831 he writes : "I have been a medical stu- 
 dent for more than six months ; I know I might have made 
 an indifferent lawyer I think I may make a tolerable physi- 
 cian I did not like the one and I do like the other ; " soon 
 after their graduation the Class of '29 began to have annual 
 dinners in Boston, and Holmes accordingly began his long 
 series of occasional poems in honor of these events ; after two 
 courses of medical lectures in Boston he sails for Paris late in 
 March, 1833, to spend two years there in completing his 
 medical education ; among his travelling companions during 
 the long voyage were George William Curtis and "Tom" 
 Appleton. 
 
 Holmes's sojourn in Paris was made possible through funds 
 inherited by his mother and through the rigid economy of 
 both his parents; after visiting Salisbury, Stonehenge, and 
 Havre, he reaches Paris, and settles there at 55 Rue M. le 
 Prince; while in Paris he works industriously from 7.30 A.M. 
 till 5 P.M., and then dines at a cafe with a jolly group of fel- 
 low-students all Bostonians ; of this Parisian experience he 
 wrote later, "I saw but little outside hospital and lecture- 
 rooms;" in the early summer of 1834, after the medical 
 lectures were over, Holmes, with several companions, makes 
 a tour through the Low Countries and back to Paris through 
 
HOLMES SO/ 
 
 England and Scotland, visiting the Burns and Scott districts 
 and the Lake country; after studying severely during the 
 winter of 1834-35, meantime subject to immediate recall 
 because of the war between France and America and the 
 strained financial condition of his parents, he ships to Boston 
 "two skeletons and some skulls," and starts, in July, 1834, 
 on a long hoped-for tour through Switzerland and Italy, 
 tramping from Geneva to Milan, visiting Venice, Bologna, 
 and Rome; he returns to America in the following autumn, 
 reaching New York December 14, 1835, after a voyage of 
 forty-three days; he had gained much medical knowledge 
 and an excellent command oif the French tongue ; while in 
 Paris he wrote no poems ; his expenses there were about 
 $1,200 a year, including books, instruments, and private in- 
 struction ; he declared in after-life, "I never risked a franc 
 on any game in Europe," and his biographer and cousin 
 maintains that the young physician " brought back no skeleton 
 except those in his trunks;" in October, 1834, when asked 
 to contribute to the New England Magazine, he writes: " I 
 shall say No, though Nemesis and Plutus come hand in hand 
 to tear me, the Cincinnatus of science, from the plough-tail 
 she has summoned me to follow." 
 
 Holmes establishes himself in an office in Boston early in 
 1836, after receiving the degree of M.D. from Harvard, and 
 intimates to the public that " small favors (or fevers) will be 
 thankfully received," but his practice at first was very small, 
 and never became more than fair ; his reputation as a wit and 
 a poet was doubtless a hindrance to his professional success ; 
 late in 1836 he publishes his first volume of poems, including 
 " Old Ironsides," " The Last Leaf," and the Phi Beta Kappa 
 poem that he had read at Harvard during the previous sum- 
 mer ; he occupies his leisure by acting for three seasons as 
 one of the physicians of the Massachusetts General Hospital ; 
 in 1838 he is "mightily pleased" on receiving an appoint- 
 ment as Professor of Anatomy at Dartmouth College a posi- 
 
80S HOLMES 
 
 tion that required his residence at Hanover only during the 
 months of August, September, and October; he holds this 
 professorship for the years 1839 and 1840; meantime he 
 competes successfully for the Boylston medical prize, his dis- 
 sertation in the competition receiving almost unanimously the 
 highest marks by the judges, although his competitors were 
 physicians of large experience from various States of the 
 Union ; he also won two other medical prizes about this 
 time; these prize dissertations were the result of enormous 
 labor and most extensive investigation by Dr. Holmes, and 
 the one on "Intermittent Fever in New England" is still 
 authoritative for the period which it covers ; later these and 
 other dissertations were gathered into a volume published 
 under the title " Medical Essays " a book that contains some 
 of Holmes's brightest wit, especially in his satirical essays 
 on homreopathy; his essay on "Contagiousness of Puerperal 
 Fever," published in 1843, established his reputation as that 
 of a physician who had made an original and very valuable 
 contribution to medical science; at first his theory was bit- 
 terly opposed by the most eminent professors of obstetrics, 
 and Holmes was subjected to violent personal abuse, but his 
 logic triumphed, and his theory is now generally accepted by 
 medical scholars; the essay was republished in 1855. 
 
 On June 15, 1840, he was married to Amelia Lee Jackson, 
 daughter of a Judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts 
 and a niece of Holmes's friend and former preceptor ; of the 
 three children of this marriage one became a Lieutenant 
 Colonel in the Civil War and afterward a Judge of the 
 Supreme Court of Massachusetts ; the other two died in com- 
 paratively early life, several years before their father; in 1847 
 Holmes is made Parkman Professor of Anatomy and Physi- 
 ology in the Medical School of Harvard College a position 
 that he held till 1871, when a separate Professorship of Physi- 
 ology was established, he still retaining the work in Anatomy ; 
 during these twenty- four years he taught also microscopy and 
 
HOLMES 809 
 
 psychology, so that he said he occupied " not a professor's 
 chair but a whole settee." 
 
 Holmes was most successful in his professorship at Harvard, 
 and took great pride in his work, though the salary was not 
 large; his lecture was always placed latest in the afternoon, 
 because he alone could hold the interest of the wearied stu- 
 dents ; he was one of the first American physicians to use the 
 microscope, and invented the hand stereoscope, now so com- 
 mon, although he never patented it ; he also made a rare col- 
 lection of old medical books, which he loved as Lamb loved 
 his old dramatists ; he was Dean of the Medical School from 
 1847 to 1853, and continued his professorship of Anatomy 
 till 1882 ; soon after his marriage he began to follow the then 
 very co.mmon practice of lecturing in various towns and vil- 
 lages of New England, and became very popular in this field ; 
 his uniform terms were " fifteen dollars and expenses;" it was 
 work that he disliked, but it was welcome as a means of eking 
 out his then scanty income ; among others, he gave twelve 
 lectures in 1852 before the Lowell Institute on the English 
 poets, and closed each lecture with verses of his own ; during 
 his country lecture-tours he became subject to asthma, a 
 malady that seriously interfered with his work and his plans 
 for travel during the rest of his life ; he dared not trust him- 
 self away from home for fear of being quite overcome by 
 asthma ; his first residence after marriage was at 8 Mont- 
 gomery Place, afterward Bosworth Street ; thence he removed 
 in 1858 to Charles Street, near the Cambridge bridge, where 
 he remained till 1870, when he removed to the home in 
 Beacon Street where he finished his days; from 1849 to 1856 
 he passed his summers at Pittsfield on a farm of two hundred 
 and eighty acres on the Lenox road, an estate inherited from 
 his maternal greatgrandfather and known in history as " Canoe 
 Meadows. ' ' 
 
 When the Atlantic Monthly was established, in 1857, 
 Lowell accepted the editorship only on the condition that 
 
8 10 HOLMES 
 
 Holmes should be " the first contributor engaged ; " Holmes 
 was then fifty years of age, and had little more than a local 
 reputation as a writer; but, as he said afterward, "Lowell 
 woke me from a kind of literary lethargy in which I was half 
 slumbering, to call me to active service;" Holmes named 
 the new periodical, and his cheery contributions over the 
 'pseudonym of the " Autocrat" really saved the undertaking 
 from financial ruin during the terrible financial panic of 1857; 
 he had first used the pseudonym in the New England Maga- 
 zine, twenty-five years before; on entering again the literary 
 field, Holmes specifically declined to become either a critic or 
 a reviewer, declaring that " when Nature manufactured her 
 authors she made the critics out of the chips that were left ; " 
 he longs to travel, and envies the European experiences of 
 his friends Lowell and Motley, but his asthma keeps him, as 
 he says, " a kind of prisoner for life in Boston ; " Fields, his 
 publisher, was for many years Holmes's next-door neighbor ; 
 his best and latest poems were first published in connection 
 with the "Autocrat" series, being scattered through the 
 prose articles; "The Chambered Nautilus" appeared in the 
 fourth of the " Breakfast-Table " series, and was at once pro- 
 nounced by Whittier to be " booked for immortality ; " dur- 
 ing his later years Holmes often read his poems in public 
 with great success, generally in behalf of philanthropic enter- 
 prises ; soon after the establishment of the Atlantic Monthly, 
 he took a prominent part in forming the famous Saturday 
 Club, which for many years dined at " Parker's " on the last 
 Saturday of each month, and included, besides Holmes, 
 Emerson, Motley, Hawthorne, Whittier, Lowell, Longfellow, 
 Whipple, Prescott, Felton, Howells, Norton, Agassiz, Park- 
 man, Sumner, and several other prominent contributors to 
 the Atlantic ; next to his own family, Holmes loved the club 
 an attitude due in part, doubtless, to his forced provincial- 
 ism; in December, 1858, he visited Irving at "Sunnyside." 
 After contributing "The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table" 
 
HOLMES 8ll 
 
 to the Atlantic, in twelve monthly instalments, during 1858, 
 he followed it the next year with the series of equal length 
 entitled "The Professor at the Breakfast-Table;" fourteen 
 years then passed before he completed the series with " The 
 Poet at the Breakfast-Table," in 1873 ; meantime he had 
 written "Elsie Venner," first published in 1859 under the 
 title of "The Parson's Love Story ; " although this was se- 
 verely criticised as "a medicated novel," etc., etc., Holmes 
 declared that it was really conceived " in the fear of God and 
 in the love of man ; " the story really treats not so much of 
 a question of physiology as of the profoundest problem in 
 theology; of his two other stories, "The Guardian Angel " 
 appeared in 1867, and "A Mortal Antipathy" in 1885. 
 
 During the war period Holmes held himself aloof from all 
 anti-slavery and other political organizations, and distrusted 
 the abolition movement ; he had an utter distaste for meet- 
 ings and committee work ; although he wrote several vigor- 
 ous war poems, his only public activity during this period was 
 in the form of an oration delivered in Boston July 4, 1863 ; 
 this oration was very widely applauded, and was afterward 
 published in the volume entitled " Pages from an Old 
 Volume of Life; " early in 1864 Holmes was one of the 
 illustrious company that followed Hawthorne's body to the 
 grave ; during his later years he was continually appealed to 
 for literary advice, and was often, as he said, "struggling in a 
 quagmire of unanswered letters and unthanked-for books; " 
 on December 3, 1879, he was honored with a breakfast by the 
 publishers of the Atlantic as that contributor who, more than 
 any other, had caused the prosperity of the magazine; at this 
 function all the prominent living writers of America were 
 either present in person or sent laudatory letters ; on Novem- 
 ber 28, 1882, he resigned his professorship in the Harvard 
 Medical School, after having lectured there thirty-five years, 
 and was made Professor Emeritus ; at the same time he en- 
 tered into a contract with his publishers for regular literary 
 
8l2 HOLMES 
 
 work; on April 12, 1883, the medical profession of the city 
 of New York gave a dinner in honor of Holmes, at which 
 William M. Evarts, George William Curtis, and Whitelaw 
 Reid took a prominent part ; after the death of Motley, one 
 of Holmes's dearest personal friends, in May, 1877, he wrote 
 a brief memoir for the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
 which he afterward expanded into a small volume a tribute 
 rather than a biography published in 1878; Holmes also 
 wrote a "Life" of Emerson for the "American Men of 
 Letters" series, published in 1884, but this, although the 
 result of profound study of and about Emerson, was also a 
 tribute or a memoir rather than a biography. 
 
 On April 29, 1886, Holmes started for Europe in company 
 with his daughter, Mrs. Sargent ; they landed at Liverpool 
 May Qth, after a voyage in which the Doctor suffered severe- 
 ly from his old enemy, the asthma; they were received with 
 marked social attention at Liverpool, and went thence to 
 London, stopping at Chester; from the beginning it was a 
 triumphal tour, as special railway carriages, flowers, and all 
 sorts of attentions were awaiting them everywhere; they 
 established themselves at 17 Dover Street, in London, and 
 were so flooded with social invitations that they were required 
 to keep a secretary to acknowledge them ; as Holmes writes, 
 "Breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, teas, receptions with spread 
 tables, two, three, four deep of an evening, with receiving 
 company at our own rooms, took up the day ; ' ' they met 
 Browning, Layard, Gladstone, James Bryce, Tyndall, and 
 scores of other eminent Englishmen, and received especial 
 attention from Lady Harcourt, Lady Rosebery, and Sir 
 Henry Irving, and Holmes saw the Derby of 1886 ; on the 
 3d of June they held a great reception and met three hun- 
 dred guests; on the 7th Holmes heard Gladstone deliver 
 his famous speech on the Irish question ; Lowell gave him a 
 dinner, at which were Leslie Stephen, DuMaurier, Andrew 
 Lang, Alma Tadema, and many other artists and literary 
 
HOLMES 813 
 
 men ; then they spent two days on the Isle of Wight, by 
 special invitation, as the guests of Tennyson ; Holmes made 
 his first visit to Cambridge in company with Edmund Gosse 
 on June i3th; on the i6th he went again, and on the lyth 
 received from the University the degree of Doctor of Letters; 
 after receiving marked social attentions at Cambridge the 
 Holmes' s went to Oxford, where the program was repeated ; 
 thence by way of York to Edinburgh, and there Holmes 
 received LL.D. ; from Edinburgh to Stirling and through the 
 Highlands to Glasgow and thence back to Oxford, where 
 they were the guests of Vice-Chancellor Jowett, and where 
 Browning, Lowell, and John Bright were assembled to meet 
 Holmes; from Oxford he received the degree of D.C.L. ; 
 after leaving Oxford the party spent a week at Stratford, and 
 then went for rest to Great Malvern; thence to Bath, thence 
 to Salisbury for a week's sojourn, and thence back to London, 
 stopping a week at Brighton ; after staying in London from 
 July 2 pth to August 5th and availing themselves of the absence 
 of " society " to see many odd nooks about the old city, they 
 crossed to Paris and spent a week there incognito, calling 
 on no one but the American Minister and M. Pasteur ; then 
 another week in London, a reception in Liverpool, and back 
 to Boston August 29, 1886. 
 
 In March, 1888, Holmes began, in the Atlantic, his last 
 prose series, entitled "Over the Tea-Cups," saying: "Al- 
 though I have cleared the eight- bar red gate, my friends 
 encourage me with the assurance that I am not yet in my 
 second childhood;" in this series of articles the most 
 remarkable feature was the poem entitled "The Broomstick 
 Train " a marvellous production for a man eighty years of 
 age ; his son Edward, a young man of feeble health but fine 
 promise, had died in 1884, and while Holmes was writing 
 the "Tea-Cup" series he lost both his wife and daughter; 
 during the last years of the poet his oldest son, Mr. Justice 
 Holmes, returned to the homestead on Beacon Street, and 
 
8 14 HOLMES 
 
 cared for his father most tenderly; about 1886 a cataract 
 began to form over one of Holmes's eyes, dimming but not 
 destroying his sight; he called it "a ^/-aract in the kitten 
 stage of development ; " this affliction compelled him to do 
 most of his writing through an amanuensis; during the last 
 half of his life his summers were spent in a simple cottage 
 that he owned at Beverly Farms on the north shore of Massa- 
 chusetts Bay, where countless attentions were showered upon 
 him by near and distant friends and admirers ; he was able to 
 walk about till his very last day, and died in his chair at his 
 Boston home October 7, 1894. 
 
 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF CRITICISM ON HOLMES. 
 Whittier, J. G., " Literary Recreations." Boston, 1872, Osgood, 128- 
 
 137. 
 Stedman, E. C., " Poets of Amerjca." Boston, 1885, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 273-304. 
 
 Whipple, E. P., "American Literature." Boston, 1887, Ticknor, 76, 77. 
 Whipple, E. P., "Essays and Reviews." Boston, 1861, Ticknor, i: 
 
 66-68. 
 
 Taylor, B., "Essays and Notes." New York, 1880, Putnam, 301, 302. 
 Richardson, C. F., "American Literature." New York, 1893, Putnam, 
 
 2: 204-219. 
 
 Kennedy, W. S., " O. W. Holmes." Boston, 1883, Cassino & Co. 
 Nichol, J., "American Literature." Edinburgh, 1882, Black, 357-363 
 
 and 407-41 1. 
 Haweis, H. R., "American Humorists." London, 1883, Chatto & 
 
 Windus, 37-73. 
 Lowell, J. R., " Poetical Works." Boston, 1882, Houghton, Mifflin & 
 
 Co., 3 : 84, 85. 
 
 Walsh, W. S., " Pen Pictures." New York, 1886, Putnam, 144-150. 
 Whittier, J. G., "Poetical Works." Boston, 1888, Houghton, Mifflin 
 
 & Co., 4: 142, 143. 
 Griswold, R. W., "Poets of America." Philadelphia, 1846, Carey & 
 
 Hart, 341-347- 
 Mitford, Miss M. R., " Recollections of a Literary Life." New York, 
 
 1851, 399-410. 
 Harper's Magazine, 83 : 277-385 (G. W. Curtis); 94: 120-154 (W. D. 
 
 Howells). 
 
HOLMES 8l5 
 
 Atlantic Monthly, 27-. 653 (Howells) ; 46:704, 705 (G. P. Lathrop) ; 
 
 70: 401, 402 (Whittier); 74: 831 (H. E. Scudder). 
 Scribner's Magazine, 18:117-127 (F. H. Underwood); 16:791-792 
 
 (Editor). 
 
 The Forum, 18 : 271-287 (J. W. Chadwick). 
 
 Literary World, 25 : 350 (Editor) ; 17 : 23 (Editor) ; 16 : 429 (Editor). 
 Review of Reviews, 10: 495-501 (E. E. Hale). 
 Critic, 22 : 242-257 and 259, and 3: 191, 192 (J. T. Morse); 8 : 46 (H. 
 
 R. Haweis); 6: I and 13 (A. W. Rollins); 4: 109 and 133 and 
 
 5 = 97 I 25 : 382- (E. Gosse). 
 The Dial (Chicago), 17 : 215-217 and 12: 209-219 (E. G. Johnson). 
 North American Review, 64: 208-216 (J. Bowen) ; 68: 201-203 ( F - 
 
 Bowen); 159: 669-677 (H. C. Lodge) ; 44 : 275 (Palfrey). 
 International Review, 8: 501-514 (R. O. Palmer). 
 Arena, II : 41-54 (M. J. Savage-). 
 Good Words, 28: 298-305 (F. H. Underwood). 
 Spectator, 61 : 855-858 (F. T. Palgrave). 
 
 Athfnasum, 1884 (2), 274 (E. W. Gosse) ; 1888 (i), 787, 788. 
 New England Magazine, n. s., I : 115 (G. W. Cooke). 
 Nation, 59 : 264, 265 (G. E. Woodberry). 
 
 PARTICULAR CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 I . Buoyancy Youthfulness Optimism. 
 
 " The gift is thine the weary world to make 
 More cheerful for thy sake, 
 
 Lighting the sullen face of discontent 
 
 With smiles for blessings sent." Whittier. 
 
 "It is Holmes's special peculiarity that the childish buoy- 
 ancy remains almost to the end, unbroken and irrepressible." 
 Leslie Stephen. 
 
 "The thing we first note is his elastic, buoyant nature, 
 displayed from youth to age with cheery frankness. . . . 
 Before his day the sons of the Puritans were hardly ripe for 
 the doctrine that there is a time to laugh, that humor is quite 
 as helpful a constituent of life as gravity or gloom." E. C. 
 Stedman. 
 
8l6 HOLMES 
 
 " I hold him as having an inalienable right to all the fresh- 
 ness and sincerity and vivacity of youth, with gravity strug- 
 gling hard to keep dominion over his countenance and laugh- 
 ter escaping for shelter to his eyes." George Bancroft. 
 
 " I knew Dr. Holmes more than sixty years ago. He was 
 a very small boy then he is still [1879] hardly less of a boy, 
 thank Heaven ! " W. H. Furness. 
 
 " The first thing which strikes a reader of Holmes is the 
 vigor and elasticity of his nature. . . . One thing ap- 
 pears certain, that he never can grow old. . . . It is im- 
 possible to read his later poems without being impressed by 
 that spirit of youthfulness with which they are animated." 
 . P. Whipple. 
 
 1 'We find in Dr. Holmes a cheerful and a hopeful spirit. 
 His mission has been to cherish hope in men and to 
 plant courage in their hearts. ... He will always be a 
 boy, even if his fourscore years should grow into a century. 
 The spirit of the boy is in him, and will not out at any bid- 
 ding whatsoever." G. W. Cooke. 
 
 " [The Poem on Contentment] is a most fair confession of 
 his liking for life's fair and pleasant things. . . . He was 
 neither stoic nor ascetic ; neither indifferent to life's sweet 
 and pleasant things nor, while hankering for their possession, 
 did he repress his noble rage and freeze the genial currents of 
 his soul. His was an undisguised enjoyment of earthly com- 
 forts ; a happy confidence in the excellence and glory of our 
 present life; a persuasion, as one has said, that if God made 
 us, then he also meant us ; ' and he held to these things so 
 earnestly, so pleasantly, so cheerfully, that he could not help 
 communicating them to everything he wrote. . . . He 
 wrote in such a jocund way, with such animal spirits and 
 pure absurdity." -John Chadwick. 
 
 " He secured from the gods, who gave him immortality, 
 also eternal youth." H. H. Boyesen. 
 
 " With the kindliness and humanity of the Doctor's tern- 
 

 HOLMES 817 
 
 perament there were linked the kindred virtues of uncon- 
 querable cheerfulness and buoyancy, with the courage which 
 is the natural comrade of these traits. His philosophy was 
 ot defiant but serene." -J. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Has there any old fellow got mixed with the boys ? 
 If there has, take him out, without making a noise. 
 Hang the Almanac's cheat and the Catalogue's spite ! 
 Old time is a liar ! We're twenty to-night ! 
 
 " We're twenty! We're twenty! Who says we are more? 
 He's tipsy, young jackanapes ! show him the door! 
 1 Gray temples at twenty ? ' Yes ! white if you please ; 
 Where the snow-flakes fall thickest there's nothing can freeze." 
 
 The Boys. 
 
 " We see that Time robs us, we know that he cheats, 
 But we still find a charm in his pleasant deceits, 
 While he leaves the remembrance of all that was best, 
 Love, friendship, and hope, and the promise of rest." 
 
 Our Banker. 
 
 " I have come to grow young on my word I declare 
 I have thought I detected a change in my hair ! 
 One hour with ' the boys ' will restore it to brown, 
 And a wrinkle or two I expect to rub down." 
 
 What I Have Come For. 
 
 2. Colloquial Habit Familiarity Self-Revela- 
 tion. " The colloquial habit of the Autocrat is so marked 
 generally as to be called distinctive. It is the quality of all 
 the authors who are distinctly beloved as persons by their 
 readers, and it is to this class that Holmes especially belongs. 
 Without the private personal touch of the essayist in 
 his stories they would not be his. His colloquial habit is 
 very winning when governed by a natural delicacy and an ex- 
 quisite literary instinct. No other author takes the reader 
 into his personal confidence more closely than Holmes, and 
 52 
 
8l8 HOLMES 
 
 none reveals his personal temperament more clearly. 
 The kindly mentor takes the reader by the button and lays 
 his hand upon his shoulder, not with the rude familiarity of 
 the bully or the boor, but with the courtesy of Montaigne, the 
 friendliness of John Aubrey, or the wise cheer of Selden. 
 The reader glows with the pleasure of an individual greeting, 
 and a wide diocese of those whom the Autocrat never saw 
 plume themselves proudly upon his personal acquaintance." 
 George William Curtis. 
 
 " His dialogues and stories are in every way the expression 
 of a stimulating personage, their author a frank display of 
 the Autocrat himself. . . . His writings surely owe their 
 main success to an approximate exhibition of the author him- 
 self."^. C. Stedman. 
 
 " There is something akin to affection which connects such 
 poets with their readers, when poet and readers are at their 
 best. They cannot be Shelleys, but they win by warmth, 
 though they dazzle not by splendor. Poets of this class put 
 their individual selves into iambus and trochee. Their per- 
 sonal attractiveness is transmuted into poetic force. . . . 
 Manliness finds in Holmes a friend and culture a companion." 
 C. F. Richardson. 
 
 " He was and is one of the few writers who are present 
 at the reading of their own works a conversationalist in type, 
 on paper a dear friend living between the covers of a printed 
 book. . . . He, more than most men, liked the sym- 
 pathy of those for whom he wrote, and was willing to secure 
 it by advances toward them, in which ... he revealed 
 his personality." Edward Everett Hale. 
 
 " There is a flavor of personality which can never be mis- 
 taken. On every page you see ' Holmes, his mark.' 
 The absence of formality is one of the principal charms. 
 His unique personality was as dear as his writings. 
 His works have put him in intimate personal rela- 
 tion with all readers of refined feeling." F. If. Underwood. 
 
HOLMES 819 
 
 " What he wrote that he was, and every one felt this who 
 met him. ... [It is] the Autocrat in his best moods 
 those moments when, all barriers of invention and situation 
 broken down, the author talks face to face, or rather soul 
 to soul, consciousness to consciousness, with the reader. "- 
 W. D. Howells. 
 
 " The one most charming feature of his printed and spoken 
 conversation is that he established a relation of sympathy 
 between himself and his readers, or listeners, by expressing 
 for them those common every-day thoughts that we all think 
 but rarely say. . . . The sunshine of his soul gleams out 
 upon you so often that you forget the offensive egotism of the 
 cit in the charm of the artless humor and tender sympathy of 
 his nature." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " Dr. Holmes had put not only the best but absolutely all, 
 both of himself and about himself into the volumes with which 
 he had amused and instructed the English-speaking world." 
 -J. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " I care not much for gold or land ; 
 
 Give me a mortgage here and there, 
 
 Some good bank-stock, some note of hand, 
 Or trifling railroad share, 
 
 I only ask that Fortune send 
 
 A little more than I shall spend." Contentment. 
 
 " O Damsel Dorothy ! Dorothy Q. ! 
 Strange is the gift that I owe to you ; 
 
 What if, a hundred years ago, 
 
 Those close-shut lips had answered No, 
 
 When forth the tremulous question came 
 
 That cost the maiden her Norman name, 
 
 And under the folds that look so still 
 
 The bodice swelled with the bosom's thrill ? 
 
 Should I be I, or would it be 
 
 One-tenth another to nine-tenths me ? "Dorothy Q. 
 
820 HOLMES 
 
 " For myself, I'm relied on by friends in extremities, 
 And I don't mind so much if a comfort to them it is ; 
 'T is a pleasure to please, and the straw that can tickle us 
 Is a source of enjoyment though slightly ridiculous." 
 
 At the Atlantic Dinner. 
 
 3. Unconventionality Simple Treatment of 
 Weighty Themes. " The researches of most scientific 
 men, especially in abstruse subjects, like the relations of body 
 and mind, are preserved in works which the public cannot 
 understand if they should try. What Tyndall has done in 
 the interpretation of the laws of nature is done even more 
 brilliantly by Holmes ; and this is not due to any letting 
 down of the subject ; it is rather furnishing the means for the 
 ordinary mind to ascend to the higher level of thought. 
 The truth was, prosaic folks had no way to estimate 
 Holmes. They wrote only stately sentences, while he was 
 free, when he chose, to use the simplest language of every-day 
 life. The ideas they would formally promulgate in methodical 
 order he lashed upon the reader with a dazzling wit." 
 F. H. Underwood. 
 
 "'Soundings from the Atlantic' are certainly unique in 
 their combination of airy, humorous treatment with solid 
 scientific discussion or teaching." W, S. Kennedy. 
 
 "[He is] a kind of attenuated Franklin who views things 
 with less robustness but keener distinction and insight. . . . 
 Somewhat distrustful of 'the inner light,' he stands square- 
 ly upon observation, experience, and induction." E. C. 
 Stedman. 
 
 " People could not believe that a man so perfectly intelli- 
 gible could be profoundly wise. . . . Mystic Holmes 
 might be, but mysterious he never was." W. D. Howells. 
 
 "He is peculiarly exasperating to theological opponents 
 . . . for the very easy way in which he gayly overlooks 
 considerations which their whole culture has induced them to 
 deem of vital moment." E. P. Whipple. 
 
HOLMES 821 
 
 " There is no straining for effect ; simple, natural thoughts 
 are expressed in simple and perfectly transparent language." 
 Whittier. 
 
 " [Dr. Holmes has been fond of exploring] that weird 
 border-land between science and speculation where psychol- 
 ogy and physiology exercise mixed jurisdiction." Lowell. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Be firm ! one constant element in luck 
 Is genuine, solid, old Teutonic pluck ; 
 See yon tall shaft ; it felt the earthquake's thrill, 
 Clung to its base, and greets the sunrise still. 
 
 Don't catch the fidgets ; you have found your place 
 Just in the focus of a nervous race, 
 Fretful to change, and rabid to discuss, 
 Full of excitements, always in a fuss ; 
 Think of the patriarchs ; then compare as men 
 These lean-cheeked maniacs of the tongue and pen ! 
 Run, if you like, but try to keep your breath ; 
 Work like a man, but don't be worked to death." 
 
 Urania. 
 
 " We, like the leaf, the summit, and the wave, 
 Reflect the light our common nature gave ; 
 But every sunbeam, falling from her throne, 
 Wears on our hearts some coloring of our own ; 
 Chilled in the slave, and burning in the free, 
 Like the sealed cavern by the sparkling sea ; 
 Lost, like the lightning, in the sullen clod, 
 Or shedding radiance, like the smiles of God ; 
 Pure, pale in Virtue, as the star above, 
 Or quivering roseate in the leaves of Love." Poetry. 
 
 " Lady, life's sweetest lesson wouldst thou learn, 
 
 Come thou with me to Love's enchanted bower : 
 High overhead the trellised roses burn ; 
 Beneath thy feet behold the feathery fern, 
 A leaf without a flower. 
 
822 HOLMES 
 
 " What though the rose-leaves fall ? They still are sweet, 
 
 And have been lovely in their beauteous prime, 
 While the bare frond seems ever to repeat, 
 * For us no bud, no blossom wakes to greet 
 The joyous flowering time ! ' 
 
 " Heed thou the lesson. Life has leaves to tread 
 
 And flowers to cherish ; summer round thee glows ; 
 
 Wait not till autumn's fading robes are shed, 
 
 But while its petals still are burning red 
 
 Gather life's full-blown rose." The Rose and the Fern. 
 
 4. Piquant Satire Graceful Badinage. - 
 
 metrical satires are of the amiable sort that debars him from 
 kinmanship with the Juvenals of old or the Popes and 
 Churchills of more recent time. . . . Yet he is a keen 
 observer of the follies and chances which satire makes its 
 food. As his humor had relaxed the grimness of a Puritan 
 constituency, so his prose satire did much to liberalize their 
 clerical system." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "All his trenchant bits of criticism and pretended dogma- 
 tism have attached to them, like a corollary, a little hint that 
 the cure for it all is chanty the understanding of other men 
 better. . . . Do you remember ' Urania, a Rhymed 
 Lesson,' away back in his youthful days with what good 
 humor it picked out all the little solecisms of dress, manners, 
 and talk, and yet left the perpetrators, while entirely cured, 
 feeling as though they were laughed with and not at?" 
 R. W. Gilder. 
 
 " Holmes is distinctively and purely a satirist, and for a 
 lifetime has been lashing others with the most stinging and 
 excoriating satire (tempered with humor and good-nature). 
 . . . When at his best, his humor has the genial and 
 kindly character which marks that of all great humorists ; but 
 too often it is only an ironical smirk, a sardonical grin, a 
 laughing at others instead of with them." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
HOLMES 823 
 
 " His are just the fine hands, too, to weave you a lyric 
 Full of fancy, fun, feeling, or spiced with satiric, 
 In a measure so kindly, you doubt if the toes 
 That are trodden upon are your own or your foe's." 
 
 Lowell. 
 
 "His manner of satirizing the foibles ... of con- 
 ventional life is altogether peculiar and original. . . . 
 He looks at folly and pretension from the highest pinnacle of 
 scorn. They never provoke his indignation, for to him they 
 are too mean to justify anger, and are hardly worth petu- 
 lance."^. P. Whipple. 
 
 11 The two bete noirs of Holmes are homoeopathy and end- 
 less punishment, and he never lets an opportunity pass of 
 giving a thrust at either. . . . The pleasantry is never 
 mocking or malevolent, and the exuberance of spirit is con- 
 tagious." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " My aunt ! my poor deluded aunt ! 
 Her hair is almost gray ; 
 Why will she train that winter curl 
 In such a springlike way ? 
 How can she lay her glasses down, 
 And say she reads as well, 
 When, through a double convex lens, 
 She just makes out to spell ? " My Aunt. 
 
 " Don't mind if the index of sense is at zero, 
 
 Use words that run smoothly, whatever they mean ; 
 Leander and Lilian and Lillibullero 
 
 Are much the same thing in the rhyming machine. 
 
 " As for subjects of verse, they are only too plenty 
 
 For ringing the changes on metrical chimes ; 
 A maiden, a moonbeam, a lover of twenty 
 
 Have filled that great basket with bushels of rhymes." 
 
 A Familiar Letter. 
 
824 HOLMES 
 
 " I think there is a knot of you 
 Beneath the hollow tree, 
 A knot of spinster Katydids, 
 Do Katydids drink tea ? 
 
 Oh, tell me, where does Katy live, 
 
 And what did Katy do ? 
 
 And was she very fair and young, 
 
 And yet so wicked, too ? 
 
 Did Katy love a naughty man, 
 
 Or kiss more cheeks than one ? 
 
 I'll warrant Katy did no more 
 
 Than many a Kate has done." To an Insect. 
 
 5. Exuberant, Dazzling Wit." The movement of 
 his wit is so swift that it is known only when it strikes. He 
 will sometimes, as it were, blind the eyes of his victims with 
 diamond-dust, then pelt them pitilessly with scoffing compli- 
 ments. He passes from the sharp and stinging gibe to the 
 most grotesque exaggerations of drollery with a most bewil- 
 dering rapidity." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " There's Holmes, who is matchless among you for wit; 
 A Leyden-jar always full-charged, from which flit 
 The electrical tingles of hit after hit." Lowell. 
 
 " His wit is all his own, so sly and tingling, but without a 
 drop of ill-nature in it, and never leaving a sting behind." 
 Francis Bowen. 
 
 " A restless wit that sees the different sides, the contradic- 
 tions, and cannot forbear to flash upon the eye all the vari- 
 ous angles of truth, while never ceasing to take the view of 
 the poet." G. P. Lathrop. 
 
 "If any of our readers need amusement and the wholesome 
 alterative of a hearty laugh, we commend them, not to Dr. 
 Holmes the physician, but to Dr. Holmes the scholar, the 
 wit, and the humorist. He was born for the ' laughter-cure' 
 as certainly as Priessnitz was for the * water-cure,' and has 
 been quite as successful in his way." Whittier. 
 
HOLMES 825 
 
 " Holmes's- rapier of wit and his social genius were so 
 flashing and brilliant that few realized his vigor as a philoso- 
 pher and thinker." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 "As a writer of comic poetry he is excelled by no other 
 English author. Hood's verses are not so gayly radiant as 
 Holmes's, do not strike the diaphragm so deeply. . . . 
 The comic in him is always saved from Rodomontade and 
 monstrosity by an equipoise of shrewd practical sense ; we 
 tremble as his glowing wheel grazes the brim of bombast and 
 folly; but, with a cut of the lash and a short turn away, he 
 flies again, laughing, and we laughing with him." W. S. 
 Kennedy. 
 
 " Probably few of our wits have done so many set tasks in 
 the 'funny line,' and done them so well as he; and few, 
 with any celebrity as wits, have so rarely set themselves to 
 tasks of their own in that line." -J. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The times were hard when Rip to manhood grew ; 
 They always will be when there's work to do ; 
 He tried at farming found it rather slow 
 And then at teaching what he didn't know. 
 
 " Talk of your science ! after all is said 
 
 There's nothing like a bare and shiny head ; 
 Age lends the graces that are sure to please ; 
 Folks want their doctors mouldy, like their cheese." 
 
 Rip Van Winkle, M.D. 
 
 "And there's our well-dressed gentleman, who sits, 
 By right divine, no doubt, among the wits ; 
 Who airs his tailor's patterns when he walks, 
 The man that often speaks, but never talks." 
 
 The Banker's Dinner. 
 
826 HOLMES 
 
 " What dreams we've had of deathless name, as scholars, states- 
 men, bards, 
 
 When Fame, the lady with the trump, held up her picture- 
 cards ! 
 
 Till, having nearly played our game, she gayly whispered, 
 'Ah!' 
 
 I said you should be something grand, you'll soon be grand- 
 
 papa." To the Harvard Alumni. 
 
 6. Fanciful Humor. " To write good comic verse is a 
 different thing from writing good comic poetry. A jest or a 
 sharp saying may easily be made to rhyme; but to blend 
 ludicrous ideas with fancy and imagination and to display in 
 their conception and expression the same poetic qualities 
 usually exercised in serious composition, is a rare distinction. 
 Among American poets we know of no one who excels 
 Holmes in this difficult branch of art. . . . Many of 
 his pleasant lyrics seem not so much the offspring of wit as 
 of fancy and sentiment turned in a humorous direction. "- 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " For clear and unstudied humor, a sense of which creeps 
 slowly and delightfully throughout the whole frame, the poems 
 of the young contributor [to the Collegian] were superior to 
 those of Hood, the great humorist of that day. 
 Holmes is greatest as a humorist. When at its best his 
 humor has the genial and kindly character which marks that 
 of all the great humorists." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 II It does not appear that anyone else did so much as Dr. 
 Holmes to change the social temper of New England, to 
 make it less harsh and joyless, and to make easier for his fel- 
 low-countrymen the transition from old things to new."- 
 /. W. Chadwick. 
 
 " [Holmes' s humor is] fun shading down to seriousness and 
 seriousness shading up to fun." Lowell. 
 " You with the classic few belong 
 
 Who tempered wisdom with a smile." Lowell. 
 
 
HOLMES 827 
 
 " His humor is so grotesque and queer that it reminds one 
 of the frolics of Puck." Francis Bowen. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " How the mountains talked together, 
 Looking down upon the weather, 
 When they heard our friend had planned his 
 Little trip among the Andes ! 
 How they'll bear their snowy scalps 
 To the climber of the Alps 
 When the cry goes through their passes, 
 1 Here comes the great Agassiz ! ' " 
 
 A Farewell to Agassiz. 
 
 " I know it is a sin 
 For me to sit and grin 
 
 At him here ; 
 
 But the old three-cornered hat, 
 And the breeches, and all that, 
 
 Are so queer ! 
 
 " And if I should live to be 
 The last leaf upon the tree 
 
 In the spring, 
 
 Let them smile, as I do now, 
 At the old forsaken bough 
 
 Where I cling." The Last Leaf. 
 
 " Since then on many a car you'll see 
 A broom-stick plain as plain can be ; 
 On every stick there's a witch astride,- 
 The string you see to her leg is tied. 
 She will do mischief if she can, 
 But the string is held by a careful man ; 
 And whenever the evil-minded witch 
 Would cut some caper, he gives a twitch." 
 
 The Broomstick Train. 
 
828 HOLMES 
 
 7. Pathos. " The poet of < The Last Leaf was among 
 the first to teach his countrymen that pathos is an equal pare 
 of true humor ; that sorrow is lightened by jest and jest re- 
 deemed from coarseness by emotion, under most conditions oi 
 this our evanescent human life." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " The fun in Holmes is always jostling the pathos. . . . 
 Its [" The Last Leafs "] pathos is all the more surprising irj 
 connection with the queer humor in the description of the old 
 man who is the subject of the poem. . . . After some 
 comic picture, grotesque phrase, or quick thrust, the reader 
 comes suddenly upon a stanza of perfect beauty of form, with 
 the gentlest touch of natural feeling." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " Broadly speaking, Holmes is Janus-faced ; that is, he has 
 a dual nature : he laughs on one side of his face, and is seri- 
 ous on the other; in one mood fun, humor, laughing satire 
 predominate; he is . . . a Yorick, a Mercutio, and as 
 nimble-witted as they ; but suddenly some hidden spring of 
 feeling or pathos is touched, the eyes brim with tears, and the 
 soul soars upward in a rapt passion of tenderest sentiment. 
 His finest humor borders close upon pathos." W. 
 S. Kennedy. 
 
 " And his the pathos touching all 
 
 Life's aims and sorrows and regrets, 
 Its hopes and fears, its final call 
 
 And rest beneath the violets." Whittier. 
 
 11 ' Homesick in Heaven ' seems to me one of the most 
 profoundly pathetic poems in the language." W. D. How- 
 ells. 
 
 11 Such lyrics as La Grisette ' and ' The Last Leaf ' show 
 that he possesses the power of touching the deeper chords of 
 the heart and of calling forth tears as well as smiles." Whit- 
 tier. 
 
 " It is the pathos in the last of these lines [in The Last 
 Leaf ] that makes the richness of the humor, a pathos that is 
 deep and sympathetic. If he laughs at what is amusing in the 
 
HOLMES 829 
 
 deeds or in the characters of men, he can weep with them, 
 too ; and by his weeping he shows that he is fully alive to 
 their distress and their sorrows. It is only a moment's touch 
 from laughter to tears ; and he has truly recognized the fact 
 that pathos lies deeper in the nature than humor, and that 
 humor must have its basis in the pathetic when it is most ser- 
 viceable and most human." G. W. Cooke. 
 
 " Still in thy human tenderness they feel 
 The honest voice and beating heart of Steele. ' ' 
 
 Edmund Gosse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " If any, born of kindlier blood, 
 Should ask, What maiden lies below ? 
 Say only this : 'A tender bud, 
 That tried to blossom in the sun, 
 Lies withered where the violets blow.'" 
 
 Under the Violets. 
 
 A few can touch the magic string, 
 And noisy Fame is proud to win them : 
 
 Alas for those that never sing, 
 
 But die with all their music in them ! 
 
 " Oh, hearts that break and give no sign 
 
 Save whitening lip and fading tresses, 
 Till Death pours out his longed-for wine 
 
 Slow-dropped from Misery's crushing presses ! " 
 
 The Voiceless. 
 
 ' Youth longs, and manhood strives, but age remembers, 
 
 Sits by the raked-up ashes of the past, 
 Spreads its thin hands above the whitening embers 
 That warm its creeping life-blood till the last. 
 
 " Dear to its heart is every loving token 
 
 That comes unbidden ere its pulse grows cold, 
 Ere the last lingering ties of life are broken, 
 
 Its labors ended and its story told." The Iron Gate. 
 
830 HOLMES 
 
 8. Point Epigram Whimsical Paradox. " The 
 most obvious characteristic of Holmes's poetry is its combined 
 terseness and finish. The lines are often poetical proverbs 
 or epigrams with vigor and point in every phrase." F. H. 
 Underwood. 
 
 11 His shrewd sayings are bright with native metaphor ; he 
 is a proverb-maker, some of whose words are not without 
 wings. . . . His pertinent maxims are so frequent that 
 it seems as if he had jotted them down from time to time and 
 here first brought them to application ; they are apothegms 
 of common life and action, often of mental experience, strung 
 together by a device so original as to make the work quite a 
 novelty in literature." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " When the Autocrat himself begins talking, the sparks of 
 epigram fly in a bracing wind of free thought, as scintillating 
 particles of snow are whirled from the roofs in winter by 
 every chance breeze." Helen Gray Cone. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The style's the man, so books avow ; 
 The style's the woman, anyhow." 
 
 How the Old Horse Won the Bet. 
 
 " No iron gate, no spiked and panelled door, 
 Can keep out death, the postman, or the bore." 
 
 A Modest Request. 
 
 " I always thought cold victuals nice ; 
 
 My choice would be vanilla ice." Contentment. 
 
 11 And with new notions let me change the rule 
 Don't strike the iron till it's slightly cool." Urania. 
 
 9. Sportive Fancy. "Like his wit, humor, and pathos, 
 this frolicsome fancy marks everything that Holmes has writ- 
 ten. In the contributions [to the New England magazines] 
 

 HOLMES 831 
 
 of the young graduate the high spirits of a frolicsome fancy 
 effervesce and sparkle." George William Curtis. 
 " That song has flecked with rosy gold 
 The sails that fade o'er fancy's sea." 
 
 William Winter. 
 
 It riots in his measures . . . fancy which he 
 tenders in lieu of imagination and power. The consecutive 
 poems of one whose fancy plays about life as he saw it may be 
 a feast complete and epicurean, having solid dishes and fan- 
 tastic, all justly savored, cooked with discretion, flanked with 
 honest wine, and whose cates and dainties, even, are not de- 
 signed to cloy a fancy whose glint, if not imagination, is like 
 that of the sparks struck off from it. ... To this day 
 [1885] there is no telling whither a fancy, once caught and 
 mounted, will bear this lively rider." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " His sense of the ludicrous is not keener than his sense of 
 the beautiful ; his wit and humor are but the sportive exercise 
 of a fancy and imagination which he has abundantly exer- 
 cised on serious topics." E. P. Whipple. 
 
 " Out of the medley of bright thoughts and quaint satire 
 shine gleams of brilliant fancy. His extraordinary alertness 
 of mind enables him to expound his subject by a variety of 
 ingenious images, to decorate it with novel suggestions, and 
 to throw upon it many charming side-lights." R. E. Pro- 
 thero. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " The lady of a thousand loves, 
 
 The darling of the old religion, 
 Had only left, of all the doves 
 
 That drew her car, one fan-tailed pigeon. 
 
 " The goddess spoke, and gently stripped 
 
 Her bird of every caudal feather ; 
 A strand of gold-bright hair she clipped, 
 And bound the glossy plumes together. 
 
832 HOLMES 
 
 " And lo, the Fan ! for beauty's hand 
 
 The lovely queen of beauty made it ; 
 The price she named was hard to stand, 
 But Venus smiled : the Hebrew paid it." 
 
 The First Fan. 
 
 " This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign, 
 Sails the unshadowed main, 
 
 The venturous bark that flings 
 
 On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings 
 
 In gulfs enchanted where the Siren sings, 
 And coral reefs lie bare, 
 Where the cold sea-maids rise to sun their streaming hair." 
 
 7*he Chambered Nautilus. 
 
 " At last young April, ever frail and fair, 
 
 Wooed by her playmate with the golden hair, 
 
 Chased to the margin of receding floods 
 
 O'er the soft meadows starred with opening buds, 
 
 In tears and blushes sighs herself away, 
 
 And hides her cheek beneath the flowers of May." 
 
 Spring. 
 
 10. Sincerity Honesty Manliness. Although 
 many of his victims, theological and medical, have writhed 
 under the poet's castigations, all admit his honesty and his 
 entire freedom from that morbidness and sentimentality that 
 sometimes mar the work of great writers. From the critic 
 of Holmes's first volume, who declares that " there is not a 
 particle of humbug in him," to that reviewer, writing after 
 the poet's death, who wishes for a list " of the men now in 
 middle age whose mental tone has been, consciously or un- 
 consciously, considerably influenced by the kindly castiga- 
 tion, until they seem intolerable of shams and half-baked pre- 
 tences that otherwise they might have gone on tolerating," 
 through all those fifty years the Autocrat ever spoke in 
 what Bayard Taylor fitly calls " that freshness and heartiness 
 of tone which springs from a fountain lower than the brain." 
 
[OLMES 
 
 " He is fresh and manly even when he securely treads the 
 scarcely-marked line which separates sentiment from senti- 
 mentality. . . . He valorously invites and courts the ma- 
 licious sharpness of the most unfriendly criticism. By thus 
 daring, provoking, and defying opposition both to his pro- 
 fessional and literary reputation, he seems to us to indicate a 
 real if somewhat impatient love of truth. . . . Nobody 
 can justly appreciate Holmes who does not perceive an imper- 
 sonal earnestness and insight beneath the play of his provok- 
 ing personal wit. . . . Even his petulances of sarcasm 
 are but eccentric utterances of a love of truth which has its 
 source in the deepest and gravest sentiments of his nature." 
 E. P. Whipple. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Young Doctor Green and shrewd old Doctor Gray 
 
 They heard the story ' Bleed ! ' says Doctor Green, 
 
 1 That's downright murder ! cut his throat, you mean ! 
 
 Leeches ! the reptiles ! Why, for pity's sake, 
 
 Not try an adder or a rattlesnake ? 
 
 Blisters ! Why, bless you, they're against the law ! 
 
 It's rank assault and battery if they draw ! 
 
 The portal system ! What's the man about ? 
 Unload your nonsense ! Calomel's played out ! " 
 
 Rip Van Winkle, M.D. 
 
 11 1 tell you, there was generous warmth in good old English cheer ; 
 I tell you, 't was a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here ; 
 
 " 'T is but the fool that loves excess ; hast thou a drunken soul ? 
 Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl ! " 
 
 On Lending a Punch Bowl. 
 
 "Yet, true to our course, though the shadows grow dark, 
 
 We'll trim our broad sail as before, 
 And stand by the rudder that governs the bark, 
 Nor ask how we look from the shore." 
 
 Sun and Shadow. 
 53 
 
834 HOLMES 
 
 II. Earnestness Serious Purpose. Those who 
 estimate Oliver Wendell Holmes merely as a wit come far 
 short of a true conception of the man and of his genius. He 
 was by no means unaware of the risk he ran of being miscon- 
 strued by that very large and highly respectable race of critics 
 and readers who mistake dull sobriety for wisdom, and con- 
 found wit with buffoonery. In one of his anniversary poems, 
 written at the very beginning of his literary career, he says to 
 the friends who have urged him to lend his song to their 
 merriment : 
 
 " Besides, my prospects don't you know that people won' tern- 
 ploy 
 
 A man that wrongs his manliness by laughing like a boy, 
 And suspect the azure blossom that unfolds upon a shoot, 
 As if wisdom's old potato could not flourish at its root ? " 
 
 "Holmes is not only a < funny man ' but a great poet, great 
 on high and noble themes, and still greater in drawing the 
 truest poetry from the most humble, homely, and even comi- 
 cal subjects. ... He possesses the power of touching 
 the deeper chords of the heart and of calling forth tears as 
 well as smiles. . . . The serious purpose is hardly hid- 
 den beneath the light-hearted play of any of Holmes's works. 
 Wisdom or joke, fun or retrospect, there is a pur- 
 pose behind it all. ' ' Edward Everett Hale. 
 ' ' His sparkling surface scarce betrays 
 
 The tide of thought beneath it rolled 
 The wisdom of the latter days 
 
 And tender memories of the old." Whittier. 
 " Dr. Holmes's inevitable gayety and exhilaration have in 
 a measure concealed the deep earnestness of the man, his love 
 of truth, his devotion to humanity, his passion for excel- 
 lence." O. B. Frothingham. 
 
 "He is not more a wit than a philosopher. Indeed, 
 behind all his humor is a motive of strong moral purpose. 
 . . . He does not believe in joy and happiness at the 
 
HOLMES 835 
 
 expense of virtue or at the expense of truth. He has been a 
 preacher all his life of the most serious gospel of duty and 
 fidelity. . . . More than one-half of his published 
 verses are on serious subjects and in very earnest mood. 
 Several of his best poems are marked by a lofty spiritual 
 aspiration, and they touch some of the deepest sentiments in 
 human nature." G. W. Cooke. 
 
 "With Holmes the sparkles of wit are like bubbles on a 
 strong tide of feeling." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 "Though all the world thinks of Dr. Holmes as a wit, he 
 was, in fact, a writer with very grave and serious purposes. 
 . . . He was a man profoundly in earnest, deeply con- 
 scientious, He wrote under an ever-present sense of respon- 
 sibility."/. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul, 
 As the swift seasons roll ! 
 Leave thy low-vaulted past ! 
 Let each new temple, nobler than the last, 
 Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast, 
 Till thou at length art free, 
 Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting sea." 
 
 The Chambered Nautilus. 
 
 " Lord of all life, below, above, 
 Whose light is truth, whose warmth is love, 
 Before thy ever-blazing throne 
 We ask no lustre of our own. 
 
 " Grant us thy truth to make us free, 
 And kindling hearts that burn for thee, 
 Till all thy Jiving altars claim 
 One holy light, one heavenly flame ! " 
 
 A Sun-Day Hymn. 
 
836 HOLMES 
 
 " Enough of speech ! the trumpet rings ; 
 
 Be silent, patient, calm, 
 God help them if the tempest swings 
 The pine against the palm." 
 
 A Voice of the Loyal North. 
 
 / 12. Localism Sectionalism. Few writers have been 
 //s6 attached to a locality and few volumes are so tinged with 
 localism as are those of Holmes. 
 
 " He is an essential part of Boston, like the crier who 
 becomes so identified with a court that it seems as if Justice 
 must change her quarters when he is gone. The Boston of 
 Holmes, distinct as his own personality, certainly must go 
 with him." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " Dr. Holmes had the passion of local patriotism. 
 His familiar habit of mind was cordially local. His affection 
 fastened upon his college and on his class ; he loved the city 
 of his life with the passion of the man who can be at home in 
 only one place." If. E. Scudder. 
 
 " He is a part of the past of Boston. ... In becom- 
 ing famous he did not cease to be local. It was as a Boston 
 man that he was known." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 11 Holmes is essentially a New Englander, and one of the 
 most faithful and shrewd interpreters of New England."- 
 George William Curtis. 
 
 " He is fairly Boston's laureate'. . . . He believed in 
 Boston as Johnson did in London." F. H. Underwood. 
 
 " The streets of London were not more beloved by John- 
 son and Lamb than those of Boston have been by Holmes. 
 He has made only short swallow-flights beyond the 
 limits of his own beloved city. If he goes to Paris, he 
 carries Boston with him ; if he goes to New York or Philadel- 
 phia, he only sighs and compares them with Boston to their 
 disadvantage, and gets back as quick as he can to the hub of 
 the solar system. A barnacle is not more closely identified 
 with its rock or a pearl with its oyster than Holmes with St. 
 
HOLMES 837 
 
 Botolph's town. All his books might be labelled ' Talks with 
 My Neighbors,' and this very provincialism or urban patriot- 
 ism forms their chief charm. He is indigenous ; throws up 
 New England sub-soil as he ploughs; his homespun characters 
 speak the native patois, and the whole tone of his writings 
 is unaffectedly Yankee." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 " Dr. Holmes was a New Englander from the central 
 thread of his marrow to his outermost rind ; he could have 
 made himself nothing else ; he knew this and accepted it, not 
 as a limitation, but with a just pleasure and sense of power." 
 /. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " Nicest place that ever was seen, 
 Colleges red and Common green, 
 Sidewalks brownish, with trees between. 
 Sweetest spot beneath the skies, 
 When the canker worms don't rise, 
 When the dust, that sometimes flies 
 Into your mouth and ears and eyes, 
 In a quiet slumber lies." 
 
 Parson Turelts Legacy. 
 
 " New England, we love thee ; no time can erase 
 
 From the hearts of thy children the smile on thy face. 
 'T is the mother's fond look of affection and pride, 
 As she gives her fair son to the arms of his bride." 
 
 To the New England Society. 
 
 " And were it any spot on earth 
 
 Save this dear home that gave him birth 
 
 Some scores of years ago, 
 He had not come to spoil your mirth 
 
 And chill your festive glow ; 
 But round his baby-nest he strays, 
 With tearful eye the scene surveys, 
 His heart unchanged by changing days, 
 
 That's what he'd have you know." 
 
 Old Cambridge. 
 
838 HOLMES 
 
 13. Conservatism Quaintness. "The distinction 
 between his poetry and that of the new makers of society verse 
 is that his is a survival, theirs the attempted revival, of some- 
 thing that has gone before. He wears the seal of ' that past 
 Georgian day ' by direct inheritance. His work is as emblem- 
 atic of the past as are the stairways and hand-carvings in 
 various houses of Cambridge. His verses have the courtesy 
 and wit, without the pedagogy, of the knee-buckle time, and 
 a flavor that is really their own. He has an ear for the classi- 
 cal forms of English verse. The conservative persistency of 
 his muse is as notable in matter as in manner. He takes un- 
 kindly to sentimental attempts at reform. . . . Innova- 
 tion savors ill to his nostril Dr. Holmes stands for 
 
 the ancestral feeling as squarely as he refutes the old belief. ' ' 
 E. C, Stedman. 
 
 " There is a great deal in Holmes that reminds one of 
 William Spencer, of Crabbe, Pope, Hood, and the prize 
 poets of the English universities. . . . How closely the 
 lyrics of Dr. Holmes resemble those of Goldsmith and Pope 
 no careful reader needs to be told." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 "For him we can find no living prototype; to track his 
 footsteps, we must go back as far as Pope or Dryden. . . . 
 Lofty, poignant, graceful, grand, high of thought, and clear of 
 word, we could fancy ourselves reading some pungent page 
 of ' Absalom and Achitophel,' were it not for the pervading 
 nationality." Mary Russell Mitford. 
 
 " There is visible in his writings also some of that homely 
 astuteness which seems to have died out with the polish of 
 modern manners. . . . He has remained loyal to eigh- 
 teenth century models. . . . This very conservatism in 
 regard to models may be a guaranty of enduring fame." P. 
 H. Underwood. 
 
 "The extraordinary success which Dr. Holmes has had 
 in adhering to an antiquated form of verse is due to its ad- 
 mirable fitness to be the vehicle of his mind. . . . The 
 
HOLMES 839 
 
 conservatism observable in his poetry was characteristic of his 
 entire nature." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " In Dr. Holmes's make up conservatism in things political 
 and social was curiously compounded with the progressive 
 tendency in religious thought." J. T. Morse. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 ' ' I love the memory of the past its pressed yet fragrant flowers, 
 The moss that clothes its broken walls the ivy on its towers ; 
 Nay, this poor bauble it bequeathed, my eyes grow moist and 
 
 dim, 
 
 To think of all the vanished joys that danced around its brim." 
 
 On Lending a Punch Bowl. 
 
 " Full seven score years our city's pride 
 
 The comely Southern spire 
 Has cast its shadow, and defied 
 The storm, the foe, the fire ; 
 Sad is the sight our eyes behold ; 
 
 Woe to the three-hilled town, 
 When through the land the tale is told 
 ' The brave " Old South" is down.' " 
 
 An Appeal for the Old South Church. 
 
 "Friends of the Muse, to you of right belong 
 The first staid foot-steps of my square-toed song; 
 Full well I know the strong heroic line 
 Has lost its fashion since I made it mine ; 
 But there are tricks old singers will not learn, 
 And this grave measure still must serve my turn." 
 
 At a Medical Dinner. 
 
 14. Adaptability Occasionalism. While his humor 
 resembles that of Steele and Lamb, and his wit that of Hood 
 and Lowell, Dr. Holmes has one characteristic in which he 
 surpasses all other writers pre-eminently. He is, of all poets, 
 
840 HOLMES 
 
 the poet of occasion. An examination of his works reveals no 
 less than thirty-two poems written for anniversaries of "that 
 happy class " of 1829 at Harvard, while we mid seventy-five 
 other poems written for as many other commemorative occa- 
 sions. 
 
 " The things which sharply distinguish Holmes from other 
 poets are the lyrics and metrical essays composed for special 
 audiences or occasions. He is our typical university poet; 
 the minstrel of the college that bred him, and within whose 
 liberties he has taught, jested, sung, and toasted from boy- 
 hood to what in common folk would be old age. 
 With his own growth his brilliant occasional pieces strength- 
 ened in thought, wit, and feeling. . . . How sure their 
 author's sense of the fitness of things, his gift of adaptability 
 to the occasion ! Now, what has carried Holmes so bravely 
 through all this if not a kind of special masterhood, an indi- 
 viduality, humor, touch, that we shall not see again ? Thus 
 we come, in fine, to be sensible of the distinctive gift of this 
 poet." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 11 Holmes was class poet at Harvard, and he remained 
 class poet all his life. . . . After reading a dozen or 
 more pages of the neat Augustan couplets of Holmes' s best 
 verse d j occasion, you have the comfortable feeling of a man 
 who has just dispatched a dish of hickory-nuts cracked in 
 halves and intermingled with raisins." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
 "As the poet of occasion, no one has ever surpassed 
 him. . . . He was always apt, always happy, always had 
 the essential lightness of touch and the right mingling of wit 
 and sentiment." Henry Cabot Lodge. 
 
 " Throughout the year [as editor of the Atlantic~\ I could 
 count upon him for those occasional pieces in which he so 
 easily excelled all former writers of occasional verse." W. 
 D. Howells. 
 
 " Holmes has been a great part of what he sings, at Cam- 
 bridge, at the old Saturday Club, at King's Chapel. The 
 
HOLMES 841 
 
 subject delights him, and perhaps this is why his occasional 
 verses are uniformly so successful. To him the occasion is all 
 that inspiration is to the less ready and versatile poet a true 
 gift of the muse." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " He, of all men, seemed to have the invention, the dash, 
 and the native grace which give to occasional verse its natural 
 and spontaneous air." F. H. Underwood. 
 " For still as comes the festal day, 
 
 In many a temple far and near, 
 The word that all have longed to say, 
 
 The words that all are proud to hear, 
 Fall from his lips with conquering sway, 
 Or grave or gay." William Winter. 
 "We doubt whether any other poet has done so much to 
 lift the ' occasional ' into the classic. With the exception of 
 some half dozen poems of Goethe's and, perhaps, one of Camp- 
 bell's, Mr. Holmes is unrivalled in his power of flashing the 
 light of higher thought and the fragrance of lofty sentiment 
 upon the banquet or commemorative meeting. In fact, this 
 is one of his native gifts, which has been so frequently and 
 delightfully exercised that it may lead some of his readers to 
 overlook his admirable lyrics." Bayard Taylor. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " You'll believe me, dear boys, 'tis a pleasure to rise, 
 With a welcome like this in your darling old eyes ; 
 To meet the same smiles and to hear the same tone, 
 Which have greeted me oft in the years that have flown. 
 
 " Were I gray as the grayest old rat in the wall, 
 My locks would turn brown at the sight of you all ; 
 If my heart were as dry as the shell on the sand, 
 It would fill like the goblet I hold in my hand." 
 
 Our Indian Summer, 
 
842 HOLMES 
 
 " Adieu ! I've trod my annual track 
 
 How long ! let others count the miles, 
 And peddled out my rhyming pack 
 To friends who always paid in smiles." 
 
 Chanson without Music. 
 
 " Will I come? That is pleasant! I beg to inquire 
 If the gun that I carry has ever missed fire ? 
 And which was the muster-roll mention but one 
 That missed your old comrade who carries the gun ? " 
 
 Once More. 
 
 15. Conviviality. Like Dickens, Holmes is sometimes 
 fond of extolling the merits of the cup ; like Dickens again, he 
 covets, not the physical effects, but the mental exhilaration 
 and the good-fellowship attendant on a moderate use of wine. 
 
 " [He was] decidedly a conservative in general tendency. 
 With all the abundant flow of hilarity in some of his class 
 songs, he can scarcely be called jovial ; and, in spite of his 
 having written a fine bacchanalian song, he is by nature and 
 habit abstemious." P. If. Underwood. 
 
 " Many of his youthful stanzas are in celebration of com- 
 panionship and good cheer. . . . Even his ballads are 
 raciest when brimmed with the element which most attracts 
 their author, that of festive good-fellowship." E. C. Stedman. 
 
 Dr. Holmes has clearly expressed his own position on this 
 point in one stanza of his famous poem " On Lending a 
 Punch Bowl:" 
 
 " I tell you there was generous warmth in good old English 
 
 cheer ; 
 
 I tell you 'twas a pleasant thought to bring its symbol here ; 
 'Tis but the fool that loves excess hast thou a drunken soul, 
 Thy bane is in thy shallow skull, not in my silver bowl." 
 
 " He has Pepys's hearty enjoyment of life loves rowing, 
 racing, trees, women, flowers, perfumes, and a well-furnished 
 table." W. S. Kennedy. 
 
HOLMES 843 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Flash out a stream of blood-red wine, 
 
 For I would drink to other days, 
 And brighter shall their memory shine, 
 
 Seen flaming through its crimson blaze ! 
 The roses die, the summers fade, 
 
 But every ghost of boyhood's dream 
 By nature's magic power is laid 
 
 To sleep beneath this blood-red stream ! " 
 
 Mare Rubrum. 
 
 " This ancient silver bowl of mine, it tells of good old times, 
 Of joyous days, and jolly nights, and merry Christmas 
 
 chimes ; 
 
 They were a free and jovial race, but honest, brave, and true, 
 That dipped their ladle in the punch when this old bowl was 
 
 new." On Lending a Punch Bowl. 
 
 " And yet, among my native shades, beside my nursing-mother, 
 Where every stranger seems a friend, and every friend a 
 
 brother, 
 
 I feel the old convivial glow (unaided) o'er me stealing, 
 The warm, champagny, old-particular, brandy-punchy feeling." 
 
 Nux Postcoenatica. 
 
 16. Power of Portraiture. Holmes has shown himself 
 a master in those single touches which, like the single strokes 
 of the painter, cause a figure to stand out before us in bold 
 relief. 
 
 " He has few superiors in discernment of a man's individ- 
 uality, however distinct that individuality may be from his 
 own. ... I do not recall a more faithful and graphic 
 outside portrait [essay on Emerson]. True, it was done by 
 an artist who applies the actual eye, used for actual vision, to 
 the elusive side of things, and who thinks little too immaterial 
 
844 HOLMES 
 
 for the test of reason and science. . . . But it sets Em- 
 erson before us in both his noon-day and sun-down moods ; 
 in his character as a town-dweller and also as when he ' looked 
 upon this earth as a visitor from another planet would look on 
 it. ' "-E. C. Stedman. 
 
 " [In " Before the Curfew "] he sketches for us portraits of 
 Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, and Hawthorne which may 
 well be placed beside any that have been drawn of these fa- 
 vorites of New England's literary age. ... [In his 
 "Vignettes," the portraits of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, 
 Moore, Dickens, Burns, etc.] his lines take hold of us like 
 the grasp of a friendly hand." G. E. Woodberry. 
 
 " Certain types of New England characters are sketched in 
 coarse raw pigment with great fidelity, but when the author is 
 depicting his subordinate. and ruder personages, you generally 
 receive the impression of grotesque exaggeration and carica- 
 ture. . . . He has an irresistible tendency to indulge 
 in a kind of horse-play, a coarse realism of portraiture, to a 
 great extent lacking in the subtle and delicate touch by which 
 the great novelists reveal the hidden springs of feeling and 
 nobleness, even in their least prominent characters." W. S. 
 Kennedy. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 " By the white neck-cloth, with its straightened tie, 
 The sober hat, the Sabbath-speaking eye, 
 Severe and smileless, he that runs may read 
 The stern disciple of Geneva's creed. 
 
 A livelier bearing of the outward man, 
 
 The light-hued gloves, the undevout rattan, 
 
 Now smartly raised or half profanely twirled, 
 
 A bright, fresh twinkle from the week-day world, 
 
 Tell their plain story ; yes, thine eyes behold 
 
 A cheerful Christian from the liberal fold." Urania, 
 
 
HOLMES 
 
 Ah, gentlest soul ! how gracious, how benign 
 Breathes through our troubled life that voice of thine ! 
 Filled with a sweetness born of happier spheres, 
 That wins and warms, that kindles, softens, cheers, 
 That calms the wildest woe and stays the bitterest tears." 
 
 To Longfellow. 
 
 " The lark of Scotia's morning sky ! 
 
 Whose voice may sing his praises ? 
 With Heaven's own sunlight in his eye, 
 
 He walked among the daisies, 
 Till through the cloud of fortune's wrong 
 
 He soared to fields of glory ; 
 But left his land her sweetest song 
 
 And earth her saddest story." On Burns. 
 
INDEX 
 
 "ABSALOM and Achitophel " quot- 
 ed, 142, 149, 152, 152, 155 
 " Abt Vogler " quoted, 699 
 Addison quoted, 76, 101, 119, 161 
 " Address to a Mouse " quoted, 225 
 "Address to Edinburgh" quoted, 
 
 231 
 "Address to the Unco Quid" 
 
 quoted, 236 
 
 "Adeline " quoted, 768 
 " After a Tempest " quoted, 558 
 " Afterthought " quoted, 474 
 "Ages, The," quoted, 568, 571, 572 
 Ainger, A., quoted, 7, 16 
 " Alastor " quoted, 355 
 Alcott, A. B. , quoted, 504 
 " Alexander's Feast " quoted, 147 
 " Allegory, An," quoted, 341 
 " Alphonso of Castile " quoted, 520 
 " Amalfi " quoted, 639 
 u Amoretti " quoted, 84 
 "Ancient Mariner, Rime of the," 
 
 quoted, 424, 431, 431 
 " Antiquity of Freedom, The," 
 
 quoted, 551 
 "Apparent Failure" quoted, 696, 
 
 70S 
 
 " Appenines, To the," quoted, 562 
 " A Prophecy " quoted, 327 
 Arnold, Matthew, quoted, 99, 112, 
 115, 122, 301, 320, 325, 407, 463, 
 468, 480, 486, 489, 503, 513, 516, 
 519, 524, 528 
 
 Arnold, Thos. , quoted, 391, 405 
 "Artemisia" quoted, 188, 207 
 " A Satire against Sedition " quoted, 
 
 151. iSi 
 
 " Astraea Redux " quoted, 162 
 "Atlantic Dinner, At the," quoted, 
 
 820 
 
 "A Tragic Fragment " quoted, 236 
 " Aurengezebe, Prologue to," quot- 
 ed, 160 
 
 " Autocrat, Our," quoted, 749 
 "Autumn " quoted, 643 
 " Autumn Woods " quoted, 552 
 " Autumnal Evening, Lines on an," 
 
 quoted, 435 
 "Aylmer's Field" quoted, 784, 790 
 
 BAGEHOT, W., quoted, 116, 256, 
 
 284, 340, 343, 346, 348, 350, 357, 
 
 359, 368, 370, 699, 782 
 " Balaustion's Adventure " quoted, 
 
 689 
 
 " Ballad on Gentilesse " quoted, 23 
 Bancroft, G., quoted, 504, 816 
 "Banker's Dinner, The," quoted, 
 
 825 
 
 " Bannockburn " quoted, 231 
 Bartol, C. A., quoted, 639, 654 
 Bayne, P., quoted, 767, 793, 801, 
 
 803 
 " Beautie, An Hymne in Honour 
 
 of," quoted, 72 
 
 "Beauty, Ode to," quoted, 526 
 Beecher, H. W., quoted, 248 
 Beers, H. A., quoted, 719, 793, 797 
 " Beggars, The Jolly," quoted, 227 
 " Belfry of Bruges, The," quoted, 
 
 641 
 " Big Bellied Bottle, The," quoted, 
 
 249 
 
 Bigelow, J., quoted, 554, 570 
 " Bigelow Papers" quoted, 597, 603 
 " Bishop Orders His Tomb " quoted, 
 
 701 
 Blackie, J. S. , quoted, 224, 227, 230, 
 
 238, 243 
 Birrell, Augustine, quoted, 112, 180, 
 
 187, 202, 687, 693 
 " Blindness, Milton's Sonnet on his 
 
 Own," quoted, 124 
 " Blissful Day, The," quoted, 246 
 "Blot in the Scutcheon" quoted, 
 
 711 
 
 ' Boston " quoted, 514 
 " Boston Hymn, The," 515 
 " Botanist, The," quoted, 511 
 Bowen, F., quoted, 824, 827 
 Boyesen, H. H., quoted, 688, 816 
 " Boys, The," quoted, 817 
 "Branded Hand, The," quoted, 
 
 73? 
 
 " Bridal of Pennacook, The," quot- 
 ed, 750 
 Brooke. Stopford, quoted, 8, 12, 18, 
 
 26, 100, no, 112, 115, 122, 219, 
 
 223, 230, 232, 241, 259, 269, 271, 
 
 8 47 
 
8 4 8 
 
 INDEX 
 
 280, 286, 422, 426, 436, 441, 462, 
 471, 477, 484, 488, 493, 494, 684, 
 689, 694, 697, 704, 771, 779, 783, 
 787, 803 
 
 " Broomstick Train, The," quoted, 
 827 
 
 " Brothers, The," quoted, 480 
 
 Browning, analysis of character by, 
 682 ; argumentation, his fondness 
 for, 706 ; bibliography of criticism 
 on, 677-679 ; biographical outline 
 of, 658-677 ; chaotic sentence 
 structure of, 686 ; character, his 
 analysis of, 682 ; characteristics of, 
 679-713 ; cool satire of, 704 ; dra- 
 matic power of, 708 ; earnestness 
 of, 702 ; faith, his strong religious, 
 697 ; fondness for monologue of, 
 690 ; fondness for argumentation 
 of, 706 ; fortitude, his robust, 693 ; 
 grotesqueness of, 699 ; incongruity 
 of, 699 ; intense vigor of, 679 ; in- 
 trospection of, 682 ; inversion of, 
 686 ; monologue, his fondness for, 
 690 ; mastery of rhyme by, 712 ; 
 obscurity of, 686 ; optimism of, 
 693 ; quoted as critic, 352, 361 ; 
 religious faith, his strong, 697 ; 
 rhyme, his mastery of, 712 ; robust 
 fortitude of, 693 ; satire, his cool, 
 704 ; sentence structure, his chaot- 
 ic, 686 ; soberness of, 702 ; strong 
 faith of, 697 ; vigor, his intense, 
 679 
 
 Browning, Mrs., quoted, 101, 112, 
 
 138, 159, 171, 265, 471, 473 
 ' Bryant, Whittier to," quoted, 749, 
 
 " Building of the Ship, The," quoted, 
 648 
 
 Bryant, apostrophe, his fondness for, 
 573 'i bibliography of criticism on, 
 548-549 ; biographical outline of, 
 520-548 ; calm trust of, in Provi- 
 dence, 570 ; characteristics of, 549 ; 
 correctness of, 562 ; dignity of, 
 549 ; elevation of, 549 ; fondness of 
 for apostrophe, 573 ; fulness of, 
 560 ; genuineness of, 552 ; har- 
 mony of, 568 ; majesty of, 559 ; 
 meditation, his profound, 571 ; 
 melody of, 568 ; melancholy, his 
 pensive, 564 ; nationality of, 566 ; 
 naturalness of, 552 ; nature, his 
 sensibility to, 555 ; particular char- 
 acteristics of, 549; patriotism of, 
 566 ; pensive melancholy of, 564 ; 
 precision of, 562 ; profound medi- 
 tation of, 571 ; reserve of, 549 ; sen- 
 sibility of, to nature, 555 ; serenity 
 f 549 ! sincerity of, 552 ; sublim- 
 
 ity of, 559 ; suggestiveness of, 560 ; 
 tenderness of, 554 , trust of, in 
 Providence, 570; sympathy, his 
 broad human, 231 , tenderness of, 
 222 ; vigor of, 225 ; warmth of af- 
 fection, his, 244 
 
 " Burial of the Minnisink" quoted, 
 657 
 
 " Burns, On " (Holmes), quoted, 845 
 
 Burns, affection, his warmth of, 244 ; 
 bibliography of criticism on, 216- 
 218 ; biography of, 208-216 ; broad 
 human sympathy ot, 231 ; coarse- 
 ness of, 247 ; conviviality of, 247 ; 
 descriptive power of, 239 ; humor, 
 his kindly, 242 ; indignation of, 
 236 ; insight, moral of, 231 ; kindly 
 humor of, 242 ; manliness of, 218 ; 
 moral insight of, 231 ; naturalness 
 of, 218 ; pathos of, 222 ; patriotism 
 of, 228 ; picturesqueness of, 239 ; 
 quoted as critic, 228 ; ridicule of, 
 236 ; scorn of, 236 ; sensuality of, 
 247 ; sincerity of, 218 ; spirit of, 
 225 ; sportiveness of, 242 ; sublim- 
 ity of, 249 
 
 Burroughs, J., quoted, 504, 506, 507, 
 510, 512, 522, 527 
 
 Byron, abruptness of, 397 ; beauty, 
 his thoughtful, 467 ; bibliography 
 of criticism on, 383-385 ; biograph- 
 ical outline of, 372-383 ; character- 
 istics, his particular, 385-410 ; con- 
 trast, his harsh, 397 ; depravity of, 
 402; egotism of, 392; eloquence, 
 his lofty, 408 ; grandeur of, 400 ; 
 harsh contrast of, 397 ; intensity 
 of, 385 ; invective, his power of, 
 395 ; lofty eloquence of, 408 ; mag- 
 nificence of, 400 ; malignity of, 
 389 ; misanthropy of, 389 ; particu- 
 lar characteristics of, 385-410 ; pas- 
 sion of, 385 ; power of invective, 
 his, 395 ; profligacy of, 402 ; quoted 
 as critic, 310 ; self-revelation of, 
 392 ; thoughtful beauty of, 407 
 
 " CAIN " quoted, 388, 402 
 
 Caine, H., quoted, 312,422 
 
 " Caliban upon Setebos " quoted, 
 
 701 
 
 Campbell, T., quoted, 85, 232, 241 
 Carlyle quoted, 113, 218, 222, 226, 
 
 228, 233, 236, 239, 242, 244, 248, 249, 
 
 419, 444 
 
 " Cassandra Southwick " quoted, 747 
 " Castaway, The," quoted, 263 
 Castelar, E. , quoted, 387, 390, 396 
 
 398, 401, 407 
 " Catawba Wine " quoted, 648 
 
INDEX 
 
 849 
 
 "Cenci, The," quoted, 360 
 
 " Centennial Hymn " quoted, 744 
 
 Chadwick, J. W. , quoted, 816, 826 
 
 Chalmers, T. , quoted, 53 
 
 " Chambered Nautilus, The," 832, 
 
 " Chamouni, Hymn in the Vale of," 
 quoted, 421 
 
 " Changeling, The," quoted, 603, 606 
 
 Channing, W. E., quoted, 101, 104, 
 no, 116, 118, 120 
 
 " Chanson without Music " quoted, 
 842 
 
 " Charity " (Cowper) quoted, 276 
 
 " Charity " (Whittier) quoted, 738 
 
 " Charles Sumner," Whittier on, 
 quoted, 749 
 
 " Charles the Second, Epistle to," 
 quoted, 157 
 
 " Chatterton, on the Death of," quot- 
 ed, 421 
 
 Chaucer, artlessness of, 5 ; bibliog- 
 raphy of criticism on, 4-5 ; bio- 
 graphical outline of, 1-3 ; charac- 
 ter, his portrayal of, 31 ; character- 
 istics of, 5-37 ; coarseness of, 36 ; 
 elevation of character of, 21 ; love 
 of nature, his, 17 ; genial humor of, 
 n ; freshness of, 5 ; humor, his 
 genial, n ; kindly satire of, n ; 
 liquid smoothness of, 8 ; minute- 
 ness of, 27 ; naturalness of, 5 ; nar- 
 rative power of, 24 ; nature, his 
 love of, 17 ; pathos, his simple, 14 ; 
 portrayal of character by, 31 ; real- 
 ism of, 27 ; respect of, for wom- 
 anhood, 16 ; satire, his kindly, 
 n ; simple pathos of, 14 ; single 
 strokes of, 27 ; smoothness, his 
 liquid, 8 ; sympathy of, wiih suffer- 
 ing, 14 ; vividness of, 27 ; woman- 
 hood, his respect for, 16 
 
 Cheever, G. B. , quoted, 262, 265, 275, 
 280 
 
 Child, Professor, quoted, 83 
 
 44 Childe Harold " quoted, 392, 394, 
 395, 408, 409, 409 
 
 " Christabel " quoted, 425, 427, 428. 
 
 " Christening of a Friend's Child, On 
 
 the," quoted, 442 
 "Christmas Eve and Easter Day" 
 
 quoted, 713 
 Church, R. W., quoted, 48, 53, 58, 
 
 61, 66, 73, 78, 82, 463, 466, 470, 480, 
 
 485 490, 493, 689 
 " Clerke's Tale, The," quoted, 8, 10, 
 
 15 
 
 " Cloud, The," quoted, 356 
 Coleridge, H., quoted, 141, 151 
 
 54 
 
 Coleridge, abstraction of, 443 ; as- 
 similation by, 438 ; beauty, his im- 
 aginative, 432 ; bibliography of 
 criticism on, 418-419 ; biographical 
 outline of, 411-417 ; characteristics, 
 his peculiar, 419-451 ; confusion of, 
 439 ; eloquence, his Miltonic, 419 ; 
 finish of, 432 ; imaginative beauty 
 of 432 ; imitation of, 438 ; lack of 
 logical sequence, his 443 ; logical 
 sequence, his lack of, 443 ; Milton- 
 ic eloquence of, 419 ; musical ver- 
 sification of, 425 ; obscurity of, 443 ; 
 particular characteristics of, 419- 
 451 ; picturesqueness of, 428 ; 
 quoted as critic, 462, 471, 480, 481, 
 490 ; realistic supernaturalism of, 
 422 ; self-reflection of, 436 ; se- 
 quence, his lack of logical, 443 ; 
 seriousness of, 436 ; sublimity of, 
 419 ; supernaturalism of, 422 ; ten- 
 derness of, 430 ; unevenness of, 
 439 ; versification, his musical, 425 
 " Colin Clout's Come Home Again " 
 
 quoted, 78, 84 
 44 Columbus " quoted, 605 
 Colvin, S., quoted, 315, 684, 706 
 " Commemoration Ode " quoted, 
 
 59i, 595 
 
 " Compensation " quoted, 505, 509 
 " Comus " quoted, 107, 116, 123 
 Cone, H. G., quoted, 830 
 " Conjunction of Jupiter and Venus, 
 
 The," quoted, 573 
 " Contentment " quoted, 819, 830 
 " Contrite Heart, The," quoted, 263 
 " Conversation " quoted, 284 
 Conway, M. D., quoted. 680, 689 
 Cooke.G. W., quoted, 514,681, 692, 
 
 701, 816, 828, 834 
 "Corsair, The," quoted, 408 
 " Cotter's Saturday Night, The," 
 
 quoted, 231, 241 
 
 " Courtin', The," quoted, 601, 607 
 Courthope, W. J., quoted, 306, 309, 
 
 315, 326, 354, 387, 391, 426, 444 
 " Courtship of Miles Standish, The," 
 
 quoted, 650, 652 
 Cowper, allusions, his scriptural, 
 
 283 ; biographical outline of, 252, 
 
 255 ; bibliography of criticism on, 
 2 55. 2 5 6 I charateristics of, 256, 288 ; 
 cheerful submissiveness of, 279 ; 
 descriptive power, his minute, 
 
 256 ; didacticism of, 277 ; fondness 
 of, for seclusion, 259; fantastic 
 humor of, 272 ; genuineness of, 
 285 ; gloominess of, 262 ; humor, 
 his fantastic, 272 ; love of nature, 
 his, 264 ; minute descriptive power 
 
850 
 
 INDEX 
 
 of, 256 ; morality, his unconven- 
 tional, 277 ; naturalness of, 285 ; 
 nature, his love of, 264 ; patriot- 
 ism of, 271 ; piety of, 279 ; quoted 
 as critic, 274, 275, 280 ; satire, his 
 theoretical, 267 ; scriptural allu- 
 sions of, 283 ; sensitive tenderness 
 of, 275 ; seclusion, his fondness 
 for, 259 ; shyness of, 259 ; simplic- 
 ity of, 285 ; sportiveness of, 272 ; 
 submissiveness, his cheerful, 279; 
 sympathy of, 275 ; tenderness, his 
 sensitive, 257 ; theoretical satire 
 of, 267 ; unconventional morality 
 of, 277 
 
 " Craggs, Ode on James," quoted, 
 184 
 
 Craik, G. L. , quoted, 78, 138, 241 
 
 " Cristina " quoted, 703 
 
 Cromwell, stanzas on, quoted, 140 
 
 " Crowded Street, The," quoted, 
 
 565 
 
 " Cuckoo, The," quoted, 489 
 " Cuckoo and the Nightingale, 
 
 The," quoted, 21 
 " Culture " quoted, 524 
 Curtis, G. W., quoted, 553, 556, 563, 
 
 564, 566, 584, 587, 597, 611, 614, 
 
 631, 634, 648, 650, 653, 817, 831, 
 
 836 
 
 " DAFFODILS, The," quoted, 472 
 " Damsel of Peru, The," quoted, 
 
 569 
 
 Dana, R. H. , quoted, 557 
 " Dandelion, To the," quoted, 593 
 Daniel quoted, 78 
 " Daphnaida " quoted, 56 
 Dawson, G., quoted, 259, 262, 278, 
 
 281, 285 
 
 Dawson, W. J., quoted, 791, 801 
 " Day is Done, The," quoted, 639 
 " Death of Schiller, The," quoted, 
 
 S^i 
 
 " Dejection : An Ode " quoted, 438 
 DeQuincey quoted, 173, 178, 187, 
 
 192, 196, 199, 203, 205, 310, 317, 
 
 SSL 359, 3 6 3. 439, 440, 445, 447 
 " Destiny of Nations, The," quoted, 
 
 421, 425, 446.451 
 DeVere, A., quoted, 71, 466, 484, 
 
 490, 494 
 
 " Devil's Walk, The," quoted, 350 
 " Digby, Ode to Robert," quoted, 
 
 184 
 
 Dobson, A., quoted, 347, 355 
 " Don Juan " quoted, 392, 399, 400, 
 
 406 
 
 " Dora " quoted, 804 
 " Dorothy Q " quoted, 819 
 
 Dowden, E., quoted, 46, 63, 67, 71, 
 106, ii2, 120, 341, 346, 350, 354, 
 361, 364, 368, 370, 393, 423, 426, 
 429, 430, 434, 438, 440, 445, 473, 
 526, 687, 694, 787, 799 
 " Down in the City " quoted, 707 
 "Dream of Fair Women, A.,'' quot- 
 ed, 768 
 
 Dryden, bibliography of criticism 
 on, 136, 137 ; biographical out- 
 line of, 131, 136 ; adulation of, 155 ; 
 argument, his specious, 153 ; bit- 
 ing satire of, 140 ; bold personal 
 portraiture of, 147 ; bombast of, 
 155 ; characteristics of, 137, 162 ; 
 coarseness of, 157 ; cold intellectu- 
 ality of, 137 ; cool satire of, 140 ; 
 directness of, 149 ; emotion, his 
 lack of, 137 ; excessive panegyric 
 of, 155 ; incisiveness of, 149 ; in- 
 tellectuality of, 137 ; masculine 
 vigor of, 149 ; metrical skill of, 
 143 ; panegyric, excessive, of, 155 ; 
 pedantry of, 159 ; personal por- 
 traiture of, 147 ; portraiture, bold 
 personal of, 147 ; satire, cool of, 
 140 ; sensuality of, 157 ; skill, his 
 metrical, 143 ; specious argument 
 of, 153 ; vanity of, 159 ; vigor, 
 masculine, of, 149 
 Dryden's lines on his portrait 
 
 quoted, 162 
 
 u Duddon, The River," quoted, 495 
 " Duchess of York, Epistle to the," 
 
 quoted, 157 
 
 " Dunciad, The," quoted, 189, 195 
 " Duty, Ode to,'' quoted, 495 
 " Dying Christian to His Soul, 
 The," quoted, 176 
 
 " EACH and All " quoted, 517 
 
 " Earth " quoted, 554 
 
 " Earth's Immortalities " quoted, 
 
 70S 
 
 " E. L., To," quoted, 792 
 
 " Elegiac Verse " (Longfellow) quot- 
 ed, 643 
 
 "Elegy on the Year 1788" quoted, 
 244 
 
 " Eleonora " quoted, 160 
 
 Emerson, Americanism of, 514 ; ap- 
 preciation of nature, his, 515 ; 
 bibliography of, criticism on, 501- 
 503 ; biographical outline of, 497- 
 501 ; characteristics of, 503-529 ; 
 conciseness of, 509 ; condensation 
 of, 509 ; crudity, his frequent, 518 ; 
 elevation, moral of, 505 ; frequent 
 crudity of, 518 ; individuality of. 
 507;; intellectuality of, 523 ; lack of 
 
INDEX 
 
 logical sequence, 527 ; logical se- 
 quence, lack of, 527 ; lyric power 
 of, 520 ; moral elevation of, 505 ; 
 mysticism of, 512 ; nature, his ap- 
 preciation of, 515 ; obscurity of, 
 512 ; optimism of, 503 ; particular 
 characteristics of, 503-529 ; preci- 
 sion of, 521 ; quoted as critic, 219, 
 229, 237, 553, 778 ; sequence, his 
 lack of logical, 527; serenity of, 
 503 ; sincerity of, 507 ; spontaneity 
 of, 520 ; suggestiveness of, 523 ; 
 transcendentalism of, 524 ; whole- 
 someness of, 503 
 
 44 Endymion" (Longfellow's), quot- 
 ed, 633 
 
 44 Endymion" quoted, 304, 310, 311, 
 319, 324, 324, 324, 326 
 1 England in 1819 " quoted, 357 
 
 " English Bards and Scotch Review- 
 ers " quoted, 397 
 
 11 Enoch Arden " quoted, 784, 790, 
 804 
 
 44 Epipsychidion " quoted, 341 
 
 " Epistle to a Lady," Pope's, quot- 
 ed, 207 
 
 44 Epistle, The," quoted, 702 
 
 44 Epistle to Davie " quoted, 221, 
 246 
 
 44 Epistle to the Rev. John McMath " 
 quoted, 221, 222 
 
 41 Epithalamion " quoted, 50, 60, 71 
 
 44 Essay on Criticism " quoted, 174, 
 197, 198, 199, 203, 203, 205 
 Essay on Man " quoted, 172, 197, 
 201, 20 1, 205 
 
 44 Eternal Goodness, The," quoted, 
 
 735 
 ' Evangeline " quoted, 633, 651, 653 
 
 44 Evening Wind, To the," quoted, 
 563 
 
 Everett, E., quoted, 553 
 
 44 Excursion, The," quoted, 463, 481, 
 481, 485, 494 
 
 " Expostulation " quoted, 272, 278 
 
 44 FABLE for Critics, A," quoted, 586, 
 
 596, 598, 600 
 " Faery Queene, The," quoted, 51, 
 
 56, 61, 65, 70, 72, 77, 77, 82, 82, 84, 
 
 44 Familiar Letter, A," quoted, 823 
 4 Fatherland, The," quoted, 591 
 " Farewell, Burns's, to his Native 
 
 Country," quoted, 246 
 44 Farewell to Agassiz, A," quoted, 
 
 827 
 
 Farrar, F. W., quoted, 696, 786 
 44 Fears in Solitude " quoted, 430, 
 
 438 
 
 Felton, C. C., quoted, 516, 518, 523, 
 526, 648, 770 
 
 44 Fenton, Mr. Elijah, Pope's Ode 
 on," quoted, 184 
 
 44 Festina Lentt " quoted, 594 
 
 44 Fill the Goblet Again " quoted, 406 
 
 44 First Advent of Love " quoted, 436 
 
 44 First Fan, The," quoted, 831 
 
 44 First Snow-Fall, The," quoted, 603 
 
 Fiske, J., quoted, 652 
 
 44 Fitz Adam's Story " quoted, 595, 
 598, 609 
 
 " Flight of the Duchess, The," quot- 
 ed, 693, 712 
 
 44 Forbearance " quoted, 524 
 
 Foster, J., quoted, 449 
 
 44 France" quoted, 439 
 
 44 Fox, On the Death of Mr. ," quoted, 
 
 44 Fra Lippo Lippi " quoted, 686, 
 
 693. 697, 706 
 
 44 Frankeleyn'sTale,The,"quoted,24 
 41 Frost at Midnight " quoted, 431 
 Frothingham, O. B., quoted, 637, 834 
 44 Fu' Sweet that Day " quoted, 242 
 Furness, W. H., quoted, 816 
 
 44 GARDENER'S Daughter, The," 
 
 quoted, 772 
 
 Gay, Epitaph on, quoted, 174 
 " Geraint and Enid " quoted, 784 
 41 Giaour, The," quoted, 388, 410 
 Gilder, R. W., quoted, 740, 743, 822 
 Gladstone, W. E., quoted, 787, 789 
 44 Glance Behind the Curtain, A," 
 
 quoted, 589 
 44 Gleam of Sunshine, A," quoted, 
 
 638, 639 
 
 44 God's Acre " quoted, 655 
 Godwin, W., quoted, 31 
 Godwin, P., quoted, 338, 343, 351, 
 
 353, 356, 3 6l i 365< 37i, 55i, 552, 556, 
 
 559, S^i, 563. 564, 566, 570, 572 
 Goethe quoted, 391, 407 
 41 Good-Bye " quoted, 517 
 44 Good Counsoil" quoted, 24 
 Gosse, E., quoted, 144. 148, 150, 159, 
 
 171, 179, 1 88, 204, 303, 340, 365 
 ' 4 Grace " quoted, 505 
 "Granville, Mr., Epistle to," quoted, 
 
 153 
 44 Grecian Urn, Ode to a," quoted 
 
 304, 309 
 
 Green, J. R., quoted, 34 
 44 Green Linnet, The," quoted, 490, 
 44 Green River " quoted, 552, 569, 
 Greene, J. R. , quoted, 269 
 Grimm quoted, 523 
 Griswold, R. W., quoted, 741 
 " Guinevere," quoted, 794 
 
8 5 2 
 
 INDEX 
 
 HALE, E. E., quoted, 818, 834 
 Halleck, F. G., quoted, 220, 235 
 " Harvard Alumni, To the," 826 
 " Hastings, On the Death of Lord," 
 
 quoted, 157 
 Haweis, H. R., quoted, 20, 22, 29, 
 
 585, 588, 590, 604, 608, 654 
 Hawthorne, J., quoted, 504, 513 
 Hazlitt, Wm., quoted, 7, 9, 14, 19, 
 
 23. 27, 32, 46, 64, 8 1, 86, loo, 104, 
 
 107, no, 112, 120, 121, 139, 142. 177, 
 
 195, 196, 200, 220, 224, 248, 250, 260, 
 
 268, 394, 399, 408, 420, 423, 426, 429, 
 435, 444, 447, 473, 482, 485, 488, 490, 
 
 41 Heaven and Earth " quoted, 402 
 44 Heavenly Love, An Hymne of," 
 
 quoted, 69 
 
 " Hebe " quoted, 614 
 44 Hellas " quoted, 344, 367, 368 
 Henley, W. E., quoted, 777 
 44 Hiawatha" quoted, 646 
 Higginson, T. W., quoted, 510, 516, 
 
 727, 737, 750, 752 
 44 Hind and Panther, The," quoted, 
 
 44 Hive at Gettysburg, The," quoted 
 752 
 
 Holmes, adaptability of, 839 ; badi- 
 nage, his graceful, 822 ; bibliogra- 
 phy of criticism on, 814-815 ; bio- 
 graphical outline of, 805-814 ; 
 buoyancy of, 815 ; characteristics 
 of, 805-845 ; colloquial habit of, 
 817 ; conservatism of, 838 ; conviv- 
 iality of, 842 ; dazzling wit of, 824 ; 
 earnestness of, 834 ; epigram of, 
 830 ; exuberant wit of, 824 ; fa- 
 miliarity of, 817 ; fanciful humor 
 of, 826 ; fancy, his sportive, 830 ; 
 graceful badinage of, 822 ; honesty 
 of, 832 ; humor, his fanciful, 826 ; 
 localism of, 836 ; manliness of, 832 ; 
 occasionalism of, 839 ; optimism of, 
 815 ; paradox, his whimsical, 830 ; 
 particular characteristics of, 815- 
 845 ; pathos of, 828 ; piquant satire 
 of, 822 ; point of, 830 ; portraiture, 
 his power of, 843 ; purpose, his se- 
 rious, 834 ; quaintness of, 838 ; 
 quoted as critic, 12, 223, 234, 302, 
 505, 512, 518, 522, 525, 528, 569, 592, 
 592, 645, 647, 647, 655, 730, 733, 
 834 ; satire, his piquant, 822 ; sec- 
 tionalism of, 836 ; self-revelation 
 of, 817 ; serious purpose of, 834 ; 
 simple treatment of weighty 
 themes by, 820 ; sincerity of, 832 ; 
 sportive fancy of, 830; weighty 
 themes, his treatment of, 820 ; 
 
 whimsical paradox of, 830 ; wit, his 
 
 exuberant, 824 ; unconventionally 
 
 of, 820 ; youthfulness of, 815 
 44 Holy Fair, The," quoted, 238 
 " Holy Willie's Prayer " quoted, 239, 
 " Hope " quoted, 279 
 Home, R. H., quoted, 470, 477, 688, 
 
 696, 769, 776 
 " How the Old Horse Won the Bet " 
 
 quoted, 830 
 Howells, W. D., quoted, 819, 820, 
 
 828, 840 
 " How it Strikes a Contemporary " 
 
 quoted, 686 
 Howitt, W., quoted, 31, 281, 326, 
 
 399, 407, 408, 776, 787, 799 
 Hudson, H. N., quoted, 463, 477 
 " Human Frailty " quoted, 283 
 Hume quoted, 76, 101 
 Hunt, L., quoted, 49, 59, 64, 77, 86, 
 
 302, 305, 307, 311, 324, 352, 354 
 41 Hurricane, The," quoted, 560 
 Hutton, R. H., quoted, 339, 342, 
 
 345. 347. 350. 358, 3 6 3, 37Q, 462, 
 
 466, 475, 477, 482, 488, 678, 683, 
 
 686, 691, 694, 702, 767, 770, 776, 
 
 786, 791, 792, 796, 799 
 44 Hymn of the City " quoted, 571 
 41 Hymn to Death " quoted, 562 
 Hymn on the Morning of Christ's 
 
 Nativity " quoted, 103, 105, 123 
 " Hymn to my Fire " quoted, 586 
 " Hyperion " quoted, 311, 316 
 
 ILIAD, Pope's translation, quoted, 
 
 " // Penseroso " quoted, 105, 121 
 44 Imitations of Horace " quoted, 
 
 199 
 
 44 Immortality, Ode on," quoted, 479 
 41 Impromptu " quoted, 476 
 " Indian Summer Reverie, An," 
 
 quoted, 594 
 
 " Indian Summer, Our," quoted, 841 
 " Initial Love, The," quoted, 520 
 41 In Memoriam " quoted, 772, 772, 
 
 788, 790, 791, 801 
 44 In the Evil Days" quoted, 738 
 41 Iron Gate, The," quoted, 829 
 Irving, W., quoted, 555, 561, 564, 
 
 41 1 Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little 
 
 Hill " quoted, 307, 316 
 "It Is not Always May" quoted, 
 
 632 
 
 JAMES, H., quoted, 506, 526, 587, 
 604, 6n, 695, 698, 702, 709 
 
 Jeffrey, F., quoted, 181, 222, 237, 
 240, 247, 250, 259, 275, 286, 305, 
 
 
INDEX 
 
 308, 314, 317, 386, 389, 398, 401, 
 
 404, 407, 485, 486 
 
 u John Gilpin's Ride " quoted, 274 
 Johnson, Samuel, quoted, 101, 109, 
 
 112, 115, 118, 119, 122, 126, 138, 
 
 143, 158, 159, 171, 186, 189, 196, 
 
 202 
 
 Johnson, O. , quoted, 739 
 "Jolly Beggars, The," quoted, 249 
 Jonson, B., quoted, 78 
 " J. W., To," quoted, 507 
 
 KEATS, bibliography of criticism 
 on, 298-300 ; biographical outline 
 of, 289-298 ; beauty, his love of, 
 300; characteristics of, 300-327; 
 deep pathos of, 312 ; delicate fancy 
 of, 305 ; exuberant imagery of, 307 ; 
 fancy, his delicate, 305 ; felicity, 
 his, in expression, 325 ; imagery, 
 his exuberant, 307 ; imagination, 
 his sympathetic, 305 ; invention, 
 his mythological, 314 ; love of 
 beauty, his, 300; magnificence 
 of, 310 ; melody of, 325 ; mysti- 
 cism ot, 317 ; mythological inven- 
 tion of, 314 ; particular character- 
 istics of, 300-327 ; pathos, his deep, 
 312 ; quoted as critic, 312 ; sensi- 
 tiveness of, 319 ; sensuousness of, 
 319 ; splendor of, 310 ; sympa- 
 thetic imagination of, 305 ; vague- 
 ness of, 317 
 
 Keble, J., quoted, 68 
 
 Kennedy. W. S., quoted, 510, 726, 
 732, 739, 743, 745, 75, 75*, 8*9, 
 820, 822, 825, 826, 828, 836, 838, 
 840, 842, 844 
 
 44 Kilchurn Castle, Address to," 
 quoted, 496 
 
 " Killigrew. Ode to Mrs. Anne," 
 quoted, 162 
 
 Kingsland, W. G., quoted, 696, 698 
 
 Kingsley, Chas., quoted, 200, 221, 
 222, 249, 351, 365, 370^404, 770, 797 
 
 " Knightes Tales, The," quoted, 10, 
 
 15, 21, 26, 30 
 
 " Know Thyself" quoted, 437 
 
 " La Belle Dame sans Merci " quot- 
 ed, 318 
 
 1 Lady Byron, To," quoted, 388 
 4 Lady of Shalott, The," quoted, 798 
 ' Lady, To a," quoted, 486 
 ^amb, C., quoted, 44,447 
 ' Lancelot and Elaine " quoted, 803 
 1 Lamia" quoted, 316 
 L nndor, W. S., quoted, 405 
 Lang, Andrew, quoted, 175, 219, 227, 
 248, 339, 631, 645, 680, 684 
 
 Lathrop, G. P., quoted, 824 
 
 44 Last Leaf. The," quoted, 827 
 
 " Legend of St. Mark, The," quoted, 
 
 747 
 
 44 Lewti " quoted, 428 
 " Liberty, Ode to," quoted, 366 
 " Liberty, Sonnets to," quoted, 479 
 44 Life " quoted, 511 
 44 Light c5f Stars, The," quoted, 646 
 44 Light Woman, A," quoted, 692 
 44 Lincluden Abbey, Verses on," 
 
 quoted, 251 
 
 " Lines to a Critic " quoted, 367 
 " Living Lost, The," quoted, 566, 573 
 Lockhart, J. G., quoted, 229, 235 
 44 Locksley Hall " quoted, 780 
 Lodge, H. C., quoted, 840 
 Longfellow, artistic fidelity of, 630 ; 
 assimilation of, 642 ; beauty, his 
 perception of, 632 ; bibliography 
 of criticism on, 629-630 ; biograph- 
 ical outline of, 616-628 ; bookish- 
 ness of, 640 ; characteristics of, 
 630-657 ; commonplace of, 644 ; 
 didacticism of, 644 ; erudition of, 
 640 ; finish of, 630 ; flexibility of, 
 646 ; grace of, 636 ; humanity of, 
 634 ; imagery, his labored, 650 ; 
 imitation of, 642 ; labored imagery 
 of, 650 ; lyric power of, 646 ; mild- 
 ness of, 636 ; mild religious ear- 
 nestness of, 653 ; naturalness of, 
 655 ; occasional vigor of, 651 ; 
 quoted as critic, 233, 240, 245, 740 ; 
 narrative power of, 649 ; optimism 
 f 653 ; perception of beauty by, 
 632 ; profuse imagery of, 650 ; re- 
 ligious earnestness, his mild, 653 ; 
 repose of, 638 ; revery of, 638 ; 
 sentiment ot, 636 ; simplicity of, 
 655 ; stock morality of, 644 ; sym- 
 pathy of, 634 ; tenderness of, 634 , 
 trust of, 653 ; variety of, 646 ; vigor, 
 his occasional, 651 
 
 "Longfellow, To," quoted, 845; 
 " Lost Leader, The," quoted, 681, 
 
 703 
 Lounsbury, T. R., 7, 9, 24, 139, 146, 
 
 I 5 
 
 44 Love and Duty " quoted, 802 
 44 Love's Philosophy " quoted, 371 
 Low, Sidney, quoted, 590, 604, 612 
 Lowell, allusiveness of, 582 ; appre- 
 ciation of nature by, 591 ; bibliog- 
 raphy of criticism on, 581-582 , 
 brilliancy of, 596; biographical 
 outline of, 74-580 ; characteristics 
 of, 582-615 ; classical finish of, 613 ; 
 culture of, 582 ; deep religious in- 
 stinct of, 604 ; didacticism of, 589; 
 
854 
 
 INDEX 
 
 erudition of, 582 ; faith in human 
 nature of, 608 ; finish, his classical, 
 613 ; human nature, his knowledge 
 of, 608 ; humorous satire of, 596 ; 
 idyllic power of, 606 ; independ- 
 ence of, 587 ; knowledge of human 
 nature of, 608 ; manliness of, 587 ; 
 melody of, 613 ; nationalism of, 
 610 ; nature, his appreciation of, 
 591 ; particular characteristics of, 
 582-615 ; portraiture, his skill in, 
 594 ; pathos of, 60 1 ; quoted as 
 critic, 5, 8, n, 14, 18, 22, 25, 27, 31, 
 37, 44, 52, 57, 62, 67, 73, 80, 85, 
 
 102, 103, 109, III, 117, 124, 138, 141, 
 
 145, I5i, 154, 158, 159, 161. 170, 
 173, 178, 183, 186, 206, 300, 305, 
 
 308, 310, 320, 325, 426, 428, 433, 
 450, 462, 472, 474, 477, 480, 484, 
 505, 523. 528, 550, 587, 589, 630, 
 634, 651, 705, 708, 730, 739, 741, 
 746, 750, 777, 821, 823, 824, 826 ; 
 religious instinct, his deep, 604 ; 
 satire, humorous, of, 596 ; section- 
 alism of, 610 ; sincerity of, 587 ; 
 skill in portraiture of, 594 ; wit of, 
 598 
 
 " Luria '' quoted, 711 
 
 MABIE, H. W., quoted, 303, 306, 
 
 309. 323. 325, 681, 683 
 Macaulay quoted, 75, 102, 103, 123, 
 
 139, 145, 148, 154. 155. 158, 161, 
 
 229, 259, 354, 387, 389, 393, 404, 
 470 
 
 MacDonald, G., quoted, 348, 352, 
 
 359 
 
 " MacFlecknoe " quoted, 143 
 *' Maidenhood " quoted, 632 
 " Manfred " quoted, 401 
 " Mantle of St. John De Matha, 
 
 The," quoted, 747 
 
 " Marchantes Tale, The," quoted, 17 
 " Mare Rubrum " quoted, 843 
 " Margaret " quoted, 768 
 " Margaret, The Affliction of,' 
 
 quoted, 492 
 
 " Mariana " quoted, 798 
 Martineau, J., quoted, 443 
 " Mary, To," quoted, 277 
 " Mary Queen of Scots, Lament of," 
 
 quoted, 492 
 " Masque of Anarchy, The, "quoted, 
 
 358 
 Masson, D., quoted, 103, 112, 122, 
 
 124, 138, 144, 307, 309, 314, 326, 
 
 339. 354. 3 6 8, 470, 473- 482, 490 
 " Maternal Grief " quoted, 467, 491 
 Mathews, B., quoted, 656 
 " Maud," quoted, 778, 780, 792 
 
 " May Queen, The," quoted, 147 
 Mazzini quoted, 391, 394, 400 
 "Medical Dinner, At a," quoted, 
 
 839 
 
 ' Medal, The," quoted, 143, 149 
 1 Melancholy, Ode on," quoted, 310 
 1 Men of England, To the," quoted, 
 
 1 Merlin and Vivian " quoted, 798 
 1 Merlin " quoted, 523, 529 
 ' Mesmerism " quoted, 689 
 1 Messiah, The," quoted, 182 
 Mill, J. S., quoted, 438, 448 
 Milton, adaptation of sound to sense 
 by, 121 ; amplitude of, 108 ; bibliog- 
 raphy of criticism on, 96, 98 ; bio- 
 graphical outline of, 89, 95 ; char- 
 acteristics of, 99, 130 ; concord of. 
 103 ; contradiction of, 126 ; dignity 
 of, 123 ; egoism of, in ; equanim- 
 ity of, 123 ; harmony of, 103 ; in- 
 congruity of, 126 ; inspiration, con- 
 scious, of, in ; intellectuality of, 
 119; learning, profound, of, 119; 
 love of natural beauty by, 105 ; 
 majesty of, 99 ; moral elevation of, 
 113 ; quoted as critic, 44, 106, 113, 
 114, 119, 479 ; unnaturalness of, 
 126 ; picturesqueness of, 105 ; pro- 
 found learning of, 119 ; purity of, 
 113 ; serene dignity of, 123 ; sub- 
 limity of, 99 ; vastness of, 108 
 Minto, W., quoted, 7, n, 16, 18, 25, 
 
 33, 36, 49. 55. 59. 76 
 Mitford, J., quoted, 148, 154, 161 
 Mitford, M. R., quoted, 303, 746, 
 
 838 
 
 " Modest Request, A," quoted, 830 
 " Monadnoc " quoted, 526 
 " Monke's Tale, The," quoted, 14 
 Montague, Lady Mary W., quoted, 
 
 188 
 
 Moore, Thos., quoted, 394, 398 
 " Monturi Salutamus" quoted, 641 
 Morse, J. S., quoted, 816, 819, 825, 
 
 835. 836, 838 
 
 11 Moral Essays " quoted, 174, 198 
 " Moral Warfare, The," quoted, 740 
 Morley, H., quoted, 13, 16, 34, 59 
 Morley, J., quoted, 402, 409, 508, 
 
 519, 527, 680, 700, 702 
 " Mother's Picture, On the Receipt 
 
 of My," quoted, 276 
 " Muipotmos " quoted, 65 
 " Music " quoted, 347 
 " My Lost Duchess " quoted, 685 
 " My Aunt " quoted, 823 
 
 "NAMELESS Grave, A.," quoted, 
 635 
 
INDEX 
 
 855 
 
 " Namesake, My," quoted, 735, 736 
 " Nature " (Emerson) quoted, 517 
 " Nature " (Longfellow) quoted, 637 
 " New England Society, To the," 
 
 quoted, 837 
 " Newfoundland Dog, Epitaph on 
 
 a," quoted, 392 
 " Nightingale, Ode to a " (Keats), 
 
 quoted, 313 
 "Nightingale, To the" (Cowper), 
 
 quoted, 288 
 Noel, R. , quoted, 712 
 " Nonne Preestes Tale, The," 
 
 quoted, 8, 13, 30 
 Norton, C. E., quoted, 506, 512, 518, 
 
 521, 584, 593. 597 
 " Nutting " quoted, 483 
 " Nux Postcoentia " quoted, 843 
 
 " ODB for the Fourth of July, An," 
 quoted. 613 
 
 u Ode on Solitude," Pope's, quoted, 
 172 
 
 44 Oenone " quoted, 778 
 
 " Oh Mother of a Mighty Race " 
 quoted, 568 
 
 44 Old Cambridge " quoted, 837 
 
 Oldham, Lines to, by JJryden, quot- 
 ed, 140 
 
 " Old South Church, An Appeal 
 for," quoted, 839 
 
 Oliphant, Mrs., quoted, 262 
 
 "On a Dream " quoted, 317 
 
 41 Once More " quoted, 842 
 
 " On Lending a Punch Bowl " quot- 
 ed, 833, 839, 842, 843 
 
 " On Scaring Some Water-fowl " 
 
 S noted, 225 
 n Seeing a Wounded Hare Limp 
 By " quoted, 225 
 " On the Sea " quoted, 311 
 li On the Young Statesman " quoted, 
 
 " Open Window, The," quoted, 637 
 
 Orr, Mrs. S., quoted, 706 
 
 Ossoli, Margaret F., quoted, 343, 
 
 346, 351, 3 62 
 
 ' Our Banker " quoted, 817 
 " Our Country " quoted, 745 
 " Our State " quoted, 744 
 
 " PACCHIAROTTO " quoted, 705 
 Palgrave, F. , quoted, 9 
 Pancoast, H. S., quoted, 15, 20 
 " Paradise Lost " quoted, 102, 102, 
 105, 108, 108, no, no, in, 113, 
 113, 113, 117, 118, 118, 121, 121, 122, 
 125, 129, 130, 130 
 
 11 Park, The," quoted, 505, 522 
 
 Parkman, F., quoted, 741 
 
 44 Parlement of Foules, The," quot- 
 ed, 21, 30 
 
 44 Parson Turell's Legacy " quoted, 
 837 
 
 44 Passing of Arthur, The," quoted, 
 
 " Pastoral Letter, The," quoted, 732 
 Paten, W., 424, 428, 430, 433, 437, 
 
 462, 465, 475, 480. 490, 493 
 Pattison, Mark, quoted, 99, 107, 115, 
 120, 171, 173, 174, 181, 183, 185, 197, 
 200, 206 
 
 11 Peter Bell " quoted, 488 
 44 Peter Bell the Third " quoted, 349 
 41 Pet Lamb, The," quoted, 464 
 Phelps, E. S., quoted, 733, 737, 752 
 " Playmate, My," quoted, 753 
 Poe, E. A., quoted, 568, 631, 640, 643, 
 
 645. 778 
 
 44 Poetry " quoted, 821 
 Pope, artificiality of, 177 ; balance of, 
 173 ; bibliography of criticism on, 
 168-170 ; biographical outline of, 
 163-168 ; brilliance of, 196 ; coarse- 
 ness of, 184 ; conciseness of, 170 , 
 contempt of, for womanhood, 205 ; 
 conventional morality of, 199 ; crit- 
 icism, his skill in, 198 ; delicate 
 skill of, in criticism, 198 ; elegance 
 of, 196 ; epigram of, 173 ; erudi- 
 tion of, 202 ; exactness of, 170 ; 
 faith, his religious, 199 ; fragmen- 
 tariness of, 203 ; gracefulness of, 
 196 ; individuality of, 183 ; insin- 
 cerity of, 189 ; learning, his wide, 
 
 202 ; logical sequence, his lack of, 
 
 203 ; malignity of, 184 ; meanness 
 of, 184 ; melody of, 174 ; morality, 
 his conventional, 199 ; point of, 
 173 ; portraiture of, 183 ; quoted as 
 critic, 145, 170 ; religious faith of, 
 199 ; sequence, his lack of logical, 
 203 ; skill of, in criticism, 198 ; 
 terseness of, 170 ; vanity of, 189 ; 
 vivid portraiture of, 183 ; wide 
 learning of, 202 ; womanhood, his 
 contempt for, 205 
 
 "Prairies, The," quoted, 568 
 
 ' 4 Praise of Women, A," quoted, 17 
 
 41 Pregnant Comment, The," quoted, 
 
 586 
 41 Prelude, The," quoted, 468, 471, 
 
 471, 474, 493 
 44 Present Crisis, The," quoted, 589, 
 
 591 
 
 4 Princess, The," quoted, 788 
 44 Problem, The," quoted, 509 
 Procter, B. W., quoted, 450 
 
856 
 
 INDEX 
 
 44 Progress of Error, The," quoted, 
 
 270 
 " Prologue to Canterbury Tales" 
 
 quoted, 8, 14, 35, 36, 36 
 44 Prometheus Unbound " quoted, 
 
 369 
 
 4 Prometheus " (Lowell) quoted, 610 
 44 Prospice " quoted, 681 
 44 Prothalamion " quoted, 65 
 Prothero, R. E. , quoted, 831 
 44 Psyche, Ode to," quoted, 307 
 41 Punishment of Death, Sonnets 
 
 on," quoted, 494 
 
 Quarterly Review quoted, 278 
 "Queen Mab " quoted, 344, 349, 
 352, 3 6 3> 364 
 
 " RABBI BEN EZRA " quoted, 696, 
 
 699. 703, 707 
 44 Rape of the Lock, The," quoted, 
 
 176, 182, 207 
 
 " Rainbow, The," quoted, 474 
 41 Reaper and the Flowers, The," 
 
 quoted, 635 
 44 Reaper, The Solitary," quoted, 
 
 476 
 
 44 Redbreast, The," quoted, 485 
 44 Reeve's Tale, The," quoted, 26 
 44 Religio Laid " quoted, 140, 155 
 " Religious Musings" quoted, 430, 
 
 446 
 44 Reminiscences " (Keats) quoted, 
 
 44 Residence at Cambridge " quoted, 
 
 464 
 
 41 Resignation " quoted, 655 
 44 Retired Cat, The," quoted, 287, 
 41 Retirement " quoted, 261, 284 
 " Reverie " quoted, 614 
 44 Revisited " quoted, 750 
 " Revolt of Islam, The," quoted, 
 
 360, 371 
 Richardson, C. F., quoted, 312, 505, 
 
 506, 508, 510, 513, 515, 518, 520, 
 
 524, 528, 550, 557, 559, 565, 571, 
 
 584, 612, 635, 726, 734, 737, 743, 
 
 752, 818 
 " Ring and the Book, The," quoted, 
 
 682 
 " Rip Van Winkle, M.D.," quoted, 
 
 ^25, 833 
 
 41 River Path, The," quoted, 754 
 4 ' Rivulet," quoted, 565 
 41 Rizpah " quoted, 780, 794 
 Robertson, E. S. , quoted, 637 
 Robertson, J. C. , quoted, 12, 21 
 Robertson, j M., quoted, 793 
 ' Rose and Fern, The," quoted, 822 
 
 Rosetti, D, G , quoted, 312 
 Rossetti, W. M., quoted, 7, 12, 67, 
 81, 101, 104, 122, 141, 146, 151, 159, 
 181, 230, 245, 268, 275, 301, 306, 
 308, 323, 340, 343, 366, 396, 426, 
 439, 466, 473 
 
 1 Ruienesof Time, The," quoted, 87 
 1 Rural Architecture " quoted, 487 
 
 4 SAADI " quoted, 524 
 
 ' Sabbath Scene, A," quoted, 732 
 
 1 Sacrifice " quoted, 507 
 
 4 Saga of King Olaf, The," quoted, 
 
 649 
 
 Saintsbury, G. , quoted, 50, 64, 63, 
 80, 85, 139, 141, 145, 147, 150, 153, 
 158, 681, 767, 770, 774 
 Sanborn, F. B., quoted, 512, 519 
 44 Satires," Prologue to Pope's, quot- 
 ed, 101, 195 
 
 4i Satires," Pope's, quoted, 195 
 41 Saul " quoted, 699 
 Savage, W, H., quoted, 506 
 Scherer, E., quoted, 99, 103, 112, 116, 
 119, 124, 126, 387, 394, 463, 467, 
 
 47L477, 480,485, 493, 775 
 44 Scotch Drink " quoted, 249 
 Scott, Sir Walter, quoted, 10, 44, 
 141, 143, 148, 150, 152, 154, 154, 
 158, 161, 237, 243, 386, 394, 400, 
 405, 407 
 Scudder, H. E., quoted, 631, 638, 
 
 640, 642, 650, 652, 836 
 44 Sea Dream, A," quoted, 753 
 " Sensitive Plant, The," quoted, 
 
 355. 360 
 
 Shairp, J. C., quoted, 19, 119, 219, 
 223, 225, 229, 231, 239, 243, 247, 
 342, 346, 348, 359, 364, 369, 426, 
 435, 437, 448, 462, 466, 469, 477, 
 482, 488, 490 
 
 Shelley, acute sensibility of, 350 ; 
 awelessness of, 347 ; biographical 
 outline of, 328-335 ; bibliography 
 of criticism on, 335-338 ; character- 
 istics of, 338-371 ; curiosity of, 
 347 ; desire, his intellectual, 3^5_; 
 faith in humanity, hjs, 368 ; fear- 
 lessness of, 361 ; high ideals of, 
 361 ; horrible, the. his taste for, 
 358 ; idealism of, 338 ; imagina- 
 tive power, his rare, 353 ; impul- 
 siveness of, 369 ; independence of, 
 364 ; intellectual desire of, 345 ; 
 intensity of, 356 ; irreverences, 
 347 ; lawlessness of, 364 ; liberty, 
 his love of, 364 ; love of liberty, 
 his, 364 ; lyrical rapture of, 342 ; 
 mysticism of, 338; optimism of, 
 368 ; particular characteristics of, 
 
INDEX 
 
 857 
 
 338-371 1 quoted as critic, 311, 
 35 1 1 445 I rapture, his lyrical, 342 ; 
 rare imaginative power of, 353; 
 sensibility, his acute, 350 ; sensual- 
 ism of, 369 ; sincerity of, 361 ; 
 subtlety of, 338 ; sympathy of, 350 ; 
 taste for the horrible, his, 358 ; 
 thirst of, 345 ; yearning of, 345 
 " Shepheard's Calendar, The," quot- 
 ed, 50, 56, 60, 81 
 
 " Shoemakers, The," quoted, 738 
 " Shrubbery, The," quoted, 264 
 " Siege of Corinth, The," quoted, 
 
 408 
 
 41 Simon Lee " quoted, 487 
 44 Simplon, The," quoted, 483 
 44 Sir Fopling Flutter " quoted, 149 
 Skeat, W., quoted, 22 
 44 Skeleton in Armor, The," quoted, 
 
 653 
 
 44 Sketch, A," quoted, 396 
 
 44 Skinner, Milton to Cyriack," quot- 
 ed, 125 
 
 44 Skylark, To a " (Shelley), quoted, 
 344, 347 
 
 "Skylark, To a "(Wordsworth), 
 quoted, 489 
 
 " Sleep, To," quoted, 476 
 
 " Sludge the Medium," quoted, 710 
 
 Smith, A., quoted, 25, 29 
 
 Smith, Goldwin, quoted, 256, 267, 
 271, 273, 277, 282 
 
 Smith, G. B., quoted, 368, 588, 594, 
 602, 604, 608, 685, 698, 709 
 
 " Snow-Bound " quoted, 648, 728 
 
 44 Snow Storm, The," quoted, 522 
 
 44 Song " (Bryant) quoted, 569 
 
 Song (Lowell) quoted, 615 
 
 Sonnet (Keats) quoted, 313, 324 
 
 Sonnet (Shelley) quoted, 364 
 
 Sonnets (Wordsworth) quoted, 467 
 
 44 Sordello," quoted, 690 
 
 Southey quoted, 447 
 
 4 ' Spanish Student, The," quoted, 
 632, 651 
 
 Spedding, J. R., quoted, 803 
 
 Spenser, adulation by, 82 ; artificial- 
 ity of, 51 ; beauty, his perception 
 of, 61 ; bibliography of criticism 
 on, 43-44 ; biographical outline of, 
 38-43 ; characteristics of, 44-88 ; 
 diffuseness of, 73 ; exquisite melo- 
 dy of, 57 ; flattery by, 82 ; idealism 
 of, 44; imagination, his rich, 44; 
 incongruity of, 51 ; license, his ver- 
 bal, 78 ; melody, his exquisite, 57 ; 
 moral elevation of, 66 ; particular 
 characteristics of, 44-88 ; percep- 
 tion of beauty by, 61 ; pictorial 
 power of, 85 ; reverence of, for 
 
 womanhood, 70 ; rich imagination 
 of, 44 ; sensitiveness of, 61 ; verbal 
 license of, 78 ; womanhood, his rev- 
 erence for, 70 
 
 " Sphinx, The," quoted, 514, 529 
 " Spirit of Poetry, The," quoted, 634 
 Spoftbrd, H. P., quoted, 727, 731, 
 
 735.739.744,748,750 
 " Spring " quoted, 832 
 " Squiere's Tale, The," quoted, 27 
 "St. Agnes, The Eve of," quoted, 
 
 " Stanzas on Freedom " quoted, 589 
 
 " Stanzas on the Prospect of Death " 
 quoted, 250 
 
 Stead, W. T., quoted, 608, 787 
 
 Ste. Beuve, quoted, 171, 196, 198, 
 257, 259, 260, 262, 265, 271, 280 
 
 " St. Cecilia's Day," Dryden's Song 
 for, quoted, 146 
 
 " St. Cecilia's Day," Pope's ode on, 
 quoted, 176 
 
 Stedman, E. C., quoted, 401, 420, 
 426, 434, 441, 504, 508, 509, 512, 514, 
 515, 518, 520, 521, 524, 550, 563, 583, 
 59> 59 1 . 594. 59\ 602, 606, 610, 613, 
 631, 632, 634, 636, 638, 640, 642, 644, 
 647, 649, 650, 656, 680, 683, 687, 691, 
 702, 708, 726, 731, 734, 737, 739, 740, 
 742,746, 748, 751, 766, 769, 773, 779, 
 791, 792, 799, 815, 818, 820, 822, 825, 
 828, 830, 831, 836, 838, 840, 842, 843 
 
 Stephen, Leslie, quoted, 171, 180, 
 183, 186, 191, 196, 200, 205, 260, 
 265, 268, 271, 273, 277, 339, 423, 
 437, 445, 465, 470, 477, 480, 482, 
 
 815 
 Stevenson, R. L. , quoted, 226, 233, 
 
 240, 243 
 
 Stillman, W. J., quoted, 601 
 Stirling, J., quoted, 780, 796, 801 
 Stoddard, R. H., quoted, 26, 35, 304, 
 
 312, 315, 557. 561, 563, 565, 570, 
 
 572, 597, 649, 654, 727, 731, 739, 
 
 744, 748, 777, 793 
 44 Strange Lady, The," quoted, 558 
 4k Submission " quoted, 283 
 Suggestions to Teachers, 11-14 
 44 Summer, A," quoted, 732 
 44 Summer Wind, The," quoted, 558 
 44 Summons, The," quoted, 751 
 4 'Sun and Shadow " quoted, 833 
 44 Sun-Day Hymn, A," quoted, 835 
 44 Sunset, The," quoted, 342 
 " Sursum Corda," quoted, 508 
 Swinburne, A. C., quoted, 237, 303, 
 
 312, 323, 325, 340, 342, 359, 385, 
 
 400, 420, 422, 425, 430, 432, 439, 
 
 443, 450, 465, 473, 475, 4 8o > 483. 
 490, 768, 780, 782. 
 
858 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Symonds, J. A., quoted, 104, 343, 
 
 346, 349, 357, 363, 365, 39i. 396, 
 
 401, 405, 473, 485, 682, 688, 690, 
 694, 697, 700, 704, 708, 712 
 
 " TACT " quoted, 520 
 
 Taine quoted, 9, 19, 24, 33, 47, 52, 
 64, 70, 75, 81, 85, 101, 105, 109, 
 114, 117, 120, 124, 127, 137, 145, 
 148, 150, 152, 158, 161, 170, 173, 
 I 75> J 79> l8 3, l8 8, 189, 220, 223. 
 237, 243, 248, 257, 275, 340, 351, 
 386, 391, 393> 398, 400, 405, 467, 
 475, 477, 487, 493, 494, 7^7, 77, 
 779, 783, 784 
 
 " Tale of the Man of Lawe, The," 
 quoted, 10, 15, 17 
 
 " Tales of a Wayside Inn " quoted, 
 641, 650 
 
 Talfourd, T. N., quoted, 420, 449, 
 
 467, 470, 481, 490 
 ' Tarn O'Shanter " quoted, 228 
 
 " Tarbolton Lasses " quoted, 228, 
 244 
 
 "Task, The," quoted, 257, 258, 258, 
 260, 266. 266, 267, 270, 271, 272, 
 283, 285; 287 
 
 Taylor, B., quoted, 551, 553, 559, 
 569, 636, 734, 742, 745, 777, 783, 
 788, 832, 840 
 
 " Teares of the Muses, The," quot- 
 ed, 69 
 1 Telling the Bees " quoted, 728 
 
 " Tell's Birthplace " quoted, 443 
 
 Tennyson, bibliography of criticism 
 on, 764-766 ; biblical flavor of, 
 789 ; biographical outline of, 755- 
 763 ; commonplace, his ornamen- 
 tation of, 781 ; diction, biblical, of, 
 789 ; dramatic power of, 792 ; ele- 
 vation, moral, of, 784 ; exquisite 
 finish of, 773 ; finish, his exquisite, 
 773 ; ideal portraiture of, 766 ; mi- 
 croscopic observation of, 794 ; 
 moral elevation of, 784 ; nature, his 
 peculiar attitude toward, 794 ; ob- 
 servation, his microscopic, 794 ; 
 occasional passion of, 779 ; opti- 
 mism of, 784 ; ornamentation of 
 the commonplace by, 780 ; ornate- 
 ness of, 781 ; particular character- 
 istics of, 766-804 ; passion of, oc- 
 casional, 779 ; pathos of, 803 ; 
 peacefulness of, 799 ; peculiar atti- 
 tude of, toward nature, 794 ; pict- 
 uresqueness of, 768 ; portraiture, 
 his ideal, 766 ; regret, infinite, of, 
 790 ; repose of, 799 ; tenderness 
 of, 803 ; vehemence of, 779 ; yearn- 
 ing of, 790 
 
 "Thanatopsis " quoted, 560, 644 
 "Three Friends of Mine" quoted, 
 
 651 
 " Thy Will Be Done " quoted, 736, 
 
 741 
 
 Times, London, quoted, 585 
 "Tintern Abbey, Lines on Revisit- 
 ing," quoted, 483 
 " Tirocinium " quoted, 270, 279 
 " To a Louse on a Lady's Bonnet " 
 
 quoted, 244 
 
 "To an Insect " quoted, 824 
 "To a Virtuous Young Lady " quot- 
 
 ed, 116 
 "To Constantia Singing" quoted, 
 
 371 
 
 " To Hope " quoted, 313 
 "To-morrow" (Shelley) quoted, 
 
 347 
 
 " To the Lord Chancellor " quoted, 
 35.8 
 
 Traill, H. D. , quoted, 420, 441, 597, 
 771 
 
 "Trust " quoted, 736 
 
 Tuckerman, H. T., quoted, 175, 181, 
 197, 220, 234, 237, 259, 271, 273, 
 277, 286, 307, 325, 340, 348, 355, 
 356, 359, 363, 3 6 5, 435, 44i, 487, 
 551, 559, 561, 567, 569, 570, 572, 
 771, 775, 783, 797, 799 
 
 "Twa Dogs, The," quoted, 236 
 
 "Twa Herds, The," quoted, 239 
 
 "Twilight," quoted, 656 
 
 "Two Voices, The," quoted, 802 
 
 " UNDER the Violets " quoted, 829 
 
 " Under the Willows " quoted, 607, 
 607 
 
 Underwood, F. H., quoted, 510, 516, 
 585, 588, 590, 593, 595, 599, 602, 
 604, 606, 633. 646, 651, 654, 727, 
 73, 734, 73 6 - 747, 818, 820, 823, 
 828, 830, 835, 836, 838, 840, 842 
 
 " Unhappy Lot, The, of Mr. Knott," 
 quoted, 600 
 
 " Universal Prayer, The," quoted, 
 
 201 
 
 " Up at a Villa" quoted, 707 
 " Urania " quoted, 821, 830, 844 
 " Uriel ' quoted, 514 
 
 " VALEDICTION " quoted, 261 
 
 Van Dyke, H., quoted, 103, 106, no, 
 
 114, 31:*, 323, 776, 785, 789, 794 
 "Village Blacksmith, The," quoted, 
 
 646, 657 
 
 " Virgil's Gnat " quoted, 87 
 44 Vision of Judgment, A," quoted, 
 
 "Voiceless, The," quoted, 829 
 
INDEX 
 
 859 
 
 foice of the Loyal North, A,' 
 
 quoted, 836 
 
 " Voices of the Night " quoted, 643 
 "Voluntaries " quoted, 507 
 
 "WALK at Sunset, A," quoted, 555, 
 
 564 
 
 " Waltz, The," quoted, 406 
 Ward, T. H., quoted, 9, 13, 15, 17, 
 
 27, 257, 262, 264, 268 
 Warton, T., quoted, 28 
 " Waterfowl, To A," quoted, 573 
 " Weariness " quoted, 635 
 Wendell, B., quoted, 727, 734, 752 
 44 Westminster Abbey, For one who 
 would not be Buried in," quoted, 
 196 
 41 West Wind, Ode to the," (Shelley) 
 
 quoted, 369 
 " What I Have Come For " quoted, 
 
 817 
 
 Whipple, E. P., quoted, 46, 59, 62, 
 67, 70, 73, 79, 82, 85, 301, 306, 317, 
 321, 350, 354, 356, 361, 386, 389, 
 392, 395, 397, 402, 407, 409, 422, 
 426, 429, 435, 461, 465, 468, 473, 
 475, 477, 482, 484, 486, 488, 490, 
 493, 494, 53, 506, 507, 511, 512, 
 516, 523, 526, 549, 552, 555, 559, 
 560, 562, 567, 630, 633, 638, 640, 
 644, 646, 649, 651, 654, 694, 727, 
 729. 733- 746, 770, 778, 796, 816, 
 820, 823, 824, 826, 831, 833 
 White, R. G., quoted, 680, 685, 708 
 Whitman, W., quoted, 219, 635 
 Whittier, artlessness of, 752 ; ballad- 
 making, his genius for, 745 ; bibli- 
 cal imagery of, 751 ; bibliography 
 of criticism on, 724-725 ; bio- 
 graphical outline of, 714-724 ; con- 
 secration of, 739 ; dexterous use 
 of proper names by, 750; faith of, 
 732 ; fervor, his religious, 732 ; 
 genius of, for ballad-making, 745 ; 
 homely beauty of, 725 ; humani- 
 tarianism of, 736 ; idyllic flavor of, 
 725 ; imagery, his biblical, 751 ; 
 inspiration of, 739 ; lyrical power 
 of, 745 ; moral energy of, 729 ; 
 nationalism of, 741 ; piety of, 732 ; 
 power of characterization of, 747 ; 
 particular characteristics of, 725- 
 754; proper names, his dexterous 
 use of, 750 ; quoted as critic, 234 
 556, 655, 815, 820, 824, 828, 828, 
 834 ; religious fervor of, 732 ; sec- 
 tionalism of, 741 ; simplicity of, 
 752 ; sympathy of, 736 
 Wilson, J. G., quoted, 235, 559, 743, 
 746 
 
 Wilson, M., quoted, 706 
 Wilson, Professor, quoted, 71, 83, 
 224, 230, 243, 245, 449, 470, 475, 
 564. 767 
 
 Winchester, C. T., quoted, 605 
 " Window, The," quoted, 778 
 41 Windsor Forest " quoted, 182 
 "Winter" (Burns), quoted, 250 
 Winter, W., quoted, 655, 831, 840 
 11 Witch's Daughter, The," quoted, 
 
 728 
 
 Woodbury, G. E. , quoted, 260, 273, 
 275, 282, 285, 303, 323, 366, 436, 
 608, 612, 614, 726, 731, 734, 742, 
 746, 748, 751, 752, 836, 838, 840, 
 844 
 11 Woodnotes " quoted, 512, 521, 
 
 526 
 
 Wordsworth, appreciative sympathy 
 of, 468 ; bibliography of criticism 
 on, 459, 461 ; biographical outlines 
 of, 452, 458 ; characteristics, his 
 particular, 461, 496 ; contemplation 
 of, 465 ; delicate sense of sound, 
 his, 474 ; didacticism of, 493 ; dul- 
 ness of, 480 ; early puerility of, 
 480 ; elevation, his moral, 476 ; ex- 
 aggeration his, of the trivial, 486 ; 
 freshness of, 488 ; grandeur of, 
 494 ; heaviness of, 480 ; imagina- 
 tive power of, 481 ; love of nature, 
 his. 468 ; meditation, his profound, 
 465 ; moral elevation of, 476 ; nat- 
 ure, his love of, 468 ; originality 
 of, 488 ; particular characteristics 
 of, 461-496 ; pathos of, 490 ; pro- 
 found meditation of, 465 ; puerility, 
 his early, 486 ; quoted as critic, 
 115, 221, 449, 773 ; self-esteem of, 
 472 ; self-reflection of, 472 ; sense 
 of sound, his delicate, 474 ; seren- 
 ity of, 494 ; severe simplicity of, 
 461 ; simplicity, his severe, 461 ; 
 stateliness of, 494 ; sympathy, his 
 appreciative, 468 ; sympathy, his, 
 with humanity, 483 
 "World's Convention," Whittier to, 
 
 orld-Soul, T.he," quoted, 514, 
 
 quoted, 75 1 
 
 "Written with a Pencil," etc., 
 quoted, 241 
 
 14 YELLOW VIOLET, The," quoted, 
 
 554 
 " Young Lady, To a," quoted, 439, 
 
 442 
 
 " Young Friend, To a," quoted, 429 
 " Youth and Age " quoted, 446, 
 
 712 
 
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